


draft

by FearTheWinterSoldier



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-14 20:12:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 50,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9200420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FearTheWinterSoldier/pseuds/FearTheWinterSoldier





	1. Chapter 1

Date: April 15th 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Office - 40th floor  
Time: 08:03

Day 1

Cara Nielsen leaned forward in her seat, tilting her head at the unscheduled arrival sitting a few feet across from her. Her forearms lay on the desktop, her fingers lightly clasped together and one eyebrow arched as the disheveled-looking man stared straight back at her expectantly despite having not yet spoken a single word.

The familiar exhausted look displayed blatantly on his aging features told her all she required about his current state, but she needed to hear it from him. She couldn't treat anyone based purely on presumptions, no matter how obvious things were.

"So... Tony? What seems to be the issue today?"

Instead of his usual custom-fitted suit with which the press were familiar, he was currently sprawled out in a pair of tracksuit bottoms and an AC/DC t-shirt that looked like it had been slept in - the black shadows under his eyes confirmed it most likely had. It wasn't an irregular occurrence that Tony would stay at headquarters overnight rather than driving across the city to Stark Tower, but Cara repeatedly advised him against it since it wreaked havoc with his sleeping patterns.

It wasn't as though they were great to begin with, especially in recent years, but he was notorious for staying up doing research well into the next morning before even considering a ten minute break. She knew he was aware of the toll all that excessive work took on him, it was just a matter of convincing him he had to do something about it.

Banner was his usual partner in crime for working rather than sleeping, but at least Bruce recognised insomnia wouldn't help him control 'the other guy'. He'd learned that the hard way after slaving over his research into ways to control himself, and subsequently making the job harder since he barely slept a wink in the process. The fear of waking up green soon put a stop to that.

Tony, with no Hulk-like incentive to take it easy, just fueled himself on energy drinks, completely bypassing the need for food or sleep when his mind was set on figuring something out or finding a solution to one of the world's countless issues. Treating him was, and always had been, an endless battle.

"You tell me, Nielsen..." he sighed, blinking and leaning back in the chair as he looked up at the ceiling in clear exhaustion, "I thought you were the professional in this relationship we have here..." Barely shifting his gaze, he gestured across the desktop with his index finger, stretching his neck one way and eliciting a crack that echoed in the silence between them, before doing the same in the other direction.

"I'd be able to help you more if you weren't so stubborn, Tony," she replied pointedly as he shrugged nonchalantly back at her, rolling his shoulders and receiving another crack as his joints slipped into place, "I assume it's the nightmares...? Why else would you be here at eight am?"

"Perhaps I love to hear your annoyed tone when you see me?" He now lifted his head and lowered his eyes to settle on her. In spite of his tiredness, he somehow still had the energy to be as awkward as he usually was. No matter how exhausted he got, he always seemed to have reserve energy stored specifically for that purpose, "I mean, everyone is usually annoyed to see me. I pride myself on my ability to annoy. I assume-"

"The medication I gave you isn't working?" She cut off his rambling with an assumption of her own, miraculously silencing him. It was a skill only she and Pepper had ever managed to master and it had taken years of trying all the same, "Have you been taking them regularly?" 

During their last consultation, she'd prescribed some strong sleeping pills for him to take before bed. 'Strong' was the operative word as they weren't available to the public at all due to their excessive drug content. Essentially, they were tranquillisers in pill form and could swiftly send an elephant into unconsciousness so she had no doubt they would knock him out in seconds despite his overactive mind. The perks of working for SHIELD were endless in that respect.

Tony hummed, "The pills work fine. The problems arise when I actually fall asleep. Pepper's been sleeping in one of the guest rooms because my endless thrashing is getting too much for her to stay beside me..." His joking side passed as he mentioned his on-again, off-again girlfriend and Cara knew how much she meant to him; she'd lost track of the number of times he'd recounted his mess-ups in the confines of the office they were currently in, "Surely there's something... some drug that can stop the panic attacks...?"

"You've tried them all, Tony. It seems anxiety medication isn't usually aimed to treat the after-effects of traumas like the ones you've endured..." She was careful not to mention New York, his worst trigger, as trying to calm him down from the seismic attacks those two words caused was something she'd had to do many times before realising the culprit was her own loose tongue, "The only thing I can suggest is taking some time away from the job for a while... I suspect stress is the main cause of these attacks-"

He was already shaking his head long before she finished her sentence, though there was hesitation in his gaze. "I can't take a break. The team needs me... plus Bruce and I are on the verge of something... I can feel it... Leaving now is not an option."

"I'm not giving you the option. The attacks are only going to get worse if you carry on putting pressure on yourself. Take a weekend away with Pepper, go somewhere nice where you can forget about work for a while. I'm sure Rogers can keep things under control without you for a couple of days, and Tasha keeps everyone in line anyway," she was trying her best to persuade him, knowing that both Steve and Natasha had expressed their concerns about Tony's health, too, though the latter might hasten to deny ever saying anything of the sort.

It was barely noticeable but her trained eyes saw his demeanour begin to waver slightly at the foreign prospect of 'not working'.

"But... Coulson? Fury?" 

"I can deal with Fury and Coulson. I'll tell them the truth and show them your MRI scans if that's what it takes to prove you're not in a fit state to be working. Just go, enjoy yourself and don't worry so much," she looked him straight in the eye, letting him judge for himself if she was being entirely honest before adding, "Pepper has already packed your bags..."

For a few moments, he didn't say anything. "What? How does she even know?" He suddenly sat up a bit straighter in confusion, his eyebrows furrowed and his face a perfect picture of bewilderment. His eyes scanned the room but a slight smile was ebbing onto his lips, "You got this place bugged or something?"

"She called last night when you didn't go home. I guess it was a happy coincidence you came to see me this morning," Cara laughed as he got to his feet, stumbling slightly from lack of sleep and resembling a toddler learning to walk for a split-second before he found his bearings, "Go. Rest up, and hopefully when you get back we can put you on something a little weaker for your panic attacks."

"You sure you're not a spy, Nielsen? I knew Fury's been training you behind our backs... You always were too smart to just be a therapist...." Tony narrowed his eyes, chuckling quietly, the apprehension still in his voice but his tired expression replaced with an image of happy relief. Even the tiredness in his eyes seemed to be dimmed, replaced by his usual mischievous glint.

"Whatever, Stark," she called after him as he headed out the door, his arms stretched above his head and his back arched slightly, "I don't want to see you in here for at least three days, you hear me? At least!"

She heard him mutter something in reply that sounded like, 'Yeah, yeah', before the door clicked shut behind him, returning peace to her office as sunlight flooded across the carpet through the partially closed blinds. Laughing once more, she rolled her eyes and leaned her head back against the headrest of her chair in a similar manner to Tony, her eyelids softly fluttering closed as she sighed. At least she had one happy customer.

Lifting her arm in front of her face, Cara checked her watch and saw the tiny hands indicate twenty past eight as they ticked rhythmically away to each other. That meant she had at least forty minutes before Barton would come up from his place at the new facility on the outskirts of the city, even longer if traffic was bad in the city centre. 

He didn't have an appointment - he was the only one who never needed one - but he came in at the same time every day, except training days, just to keep her company and have someone to talk to while everyone else was in morning brief. He had no reason to attend it since he was the most senior member of the team - a fact she always loved to tease him about. She figured that their little chats could be classed as some form of therapy for both of them.

She pulled the chair back towards the desk, rolling forwards before she stopped it with her hands on the metal surface in front of her. Opening her laptop, she softly hummed some unnameable tune as it started itself up, the screen displaying the usual SHIELD logo along with a warning about needing at least Level 5 clearance to access the files on it - most of which concerned information on the mental state of every SHIELD agent, information that couldn't fall into the wrong hands. The precautions were extremely necessary but she was already Level 6 so she could clear the firewall with just her password.

When she'd first been employed by Director Fury, she was an operator in the main control room, monitoring drones and the odd covert operation. Gradually, she rose through the ranks until he eventually realised she was a suitably trustworthy and skilled member and so appointed her as the personal therapist and psychiatrist for the Avengers and a number of senior staff whose names she was forbidden to reveal under any circumstances. That gave her access to the records of every member of the Avengers Initiative, meaning everything on her laptop did not have back-up copies - a fact she'd been reminded of many times when it had been damaged though she reiterated each time that it wasn't her fault a green monster punched the screen...

The hard drive hadn't been damaged to date, but Banner constantly made a point of apologising for those incidents any time he saw her. She'd always argued it was the Hulk and not Bruce who smashed her computer...

Making her way through the many encryptions and passwords needed, she eventually made it to Tony's files which were one of the most heavily guarded after Natasha's, the Maximoffs' and Steve's, all of which contained aspects which would have catastrophic impacts if revealed to the world or anyone outside of headquarters. Most of Natasha's past had been revealed during the HYDRA corruption two years previous, but everything recent was still kept under lock and key.

It opened in another password-protected window and she rolled her eyes as she typed yet another one in. It was a nightmare having to remember twenty or more just to reach one file, but she couldn't write them down so she'd just had to memorise every single one.

After around twenty minutes of navigating through yet more files, Tony's therapy log finally appeared on her screen, allowing her to enter the details of the meeting they'd just had to the finest specifics, careful not to miss out any parts that she could be called out on as she'd done on previous occasions. She also added in their planned destination as it would mean less hassle for Tony when he got back from his rest before clicking save and closing the window securely, ensuring it didn't appear in her history as that was the first place infiltrators would look.

She had always made a vow to herself never to read any of the records of the agents' pasts or anything other than their medical history because it felt like betraying their trust to pry into the secrets of her patients. That's what they were after all; that's what her doctorate in psychology was for - she was the doctor and they were her patients, if they wanted her to know something about their past they'd tell her in person.

Spying and prying were job requirements at SHIELD, sure, but they didn't apply to her. Her job was to help them cope with their jobs and how it affected their lives and she went no further than that... 

Cara wasn't a fighter. She was a healer. And she'd prefer to stay that way...

\------------

Date: April 15th 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Office - 40th floor  
Time: 08:51

Italics = sign language

Barton made it upstairs in a quicker than usual time according to the clock that ticked absently to itself on the far wall, the sound of his footsteps outside in the hallway alerting Cara as she bookmarked the page she was on and dropped her book into her desk draw. She didn't usually find much time to read with the hectic schedule she was set on, but she spared five minutes or so here and there to relax and indulge in the fantasy world of fiction.

Getting away from the real world for a short while was good for anyone's mental state.

He knocked twice before walking in, his eyes sweeping upwards and his face breaking into a smile when he saw her. He was in his everyday uniform rather than his mission get-up, the long sleeves of his top hiding his hands as he clutched the hems in his gloved palms. Instead of his regulation boots, battered sneakers covered his feet, proving that he still wasn't quite back from retirement no matter what he said.

"Hey, Clint. How's it going-?" He cut her off by gesturing towards his ears, confusing her for all of a few seconds until she twigged what he was alluding to. He was pointing not to what was there, but more to what wasn't - he wasn't wearing his hearing aids. 

She nodded in realisation before motioning with one hand for him to sit on the couch behind her desk, overlooking the breathtaking but usually cloudy New York skyline out the window behind it. "Where are they?" she signed, going to join him amongst the plush cushions arranged haphazardly across it in what she guessed had been one of her random artistic moods.

"Took them down to the lab just now," he replied, louder than usual as he couldn't hear himself, but Cara didn't complain. She was used to conversations like this by now. He pulled his legs up underneath him even though his shoes were still on, perching on the edge of the cushion and rocking slightly back and forth, "Something faulty in the wiring..."

"I see," she replied with her hands, eyeing his constant movement, "Perhaps you should get the guys down there to give them an upgrade. Give you super hearing or something?"

Clint chuckled, shaking his head, "I doubt Fury would let them go that far. Normal hearing is the best I can get..." He looked down for a couple of moments, tapping his fingernails against the empty holster around his thigh and making a light clicking sound before letting out a weighted breath, "Sure beats not hearing..."

Taken aback by this sudden turn, she leaned across the gap between them and shoved his shoulder lightly, making him meet her gaze before she argued, "There's nothing wrong with being deaf. It's heightened your other senses, hasn't it?"

He glanced up from her moving hands to her face, insecurity lying clearly in his eyes and restlessness evident in his fingers. This was what she meant when she said Clint didn't need therapy but still needed someone to talk to; ever since the accident that took his hearing, his self-esteem plummeted and she constantly worked to prove to him that he was no less of a man without his hearing than he was with it. 

He, like many of the Avengers, was also very stubborn when he'd got his thoughts set a certain way and she knew it would be a while before he believed her - still, that sure as hell wouldn't stop her from trying.

"That's one upside in a steep slope of downsides, Cara... I hate not being able to hear..." He stared down at his own moving hands, the palms covered by his fingerless gloves which were fraying at the edges from natural wear and kicking ass, "I feel like no one takes me seriously with the aids... everyone looks at me differently - like I'm a liability..."

"You are not a liability," she countered, making sure he was looking at her so she didn't have to repeat it, "Just ask the others. Not one of them would call you a liability."

"Not to my face they wouldn't. But who knows what they say when I'm not there, right?" Clint began picking at his nails, deliberately avoiding her gaze but keeping his stare focused on her hands, almost as though he was willing her to prove him wrong.

She reached out and placed one of her hands over his own two which were twitching feverishly against his upper thigh, bringing them to a standstill and prompting him to tear his gaze away from her hands and back to his before flickering back again. Drawing her hand back, she started to sign again as he watched intently, "Clint, I'm a therapist for all of you guys. I know everyone's deepest and darkest issues and I hold some very dangerous secrets inside my head but never has a single one of my patients said a bad word against you. You were the one who was here from the beginning; you recruited Romanoff; without you, Thor would have been a lot harder to take down... Without you, the Avengers would be nothing like what they are today... You are anything but a liability, okay?"

This time he did meet her eyes, properly and with questioning in his as he was clearly trying to find some sign that she was just saying it to make him feel better. She was - but that didn't make it any less true.

"You sure about that?" he asked, raising an eyebrow to appear uninterested but the hope in his eyes begged for the next thing she signed to be the truth.

Cara simply nodded, the gesture saying it better than signing or words ever could. "Where has this come from all of a sudden? Who said you're a liability?"

He sat back slightly, his hands still moving but considerably less so. She'd never brought it up with him, but she'd always surmised his constant twitching and tapping was a result of his insecurities. He felt useless so he made himself useful by persistently running errands and doing jobs - when he was stilled, his hands and body still craved that constant motion. When he told her about all the renovations he'd been doing at the farmhouse, it only backed up her suspicions.

And, after being made into a drone by Loki's sceptre, he was still desperate for the feeling of being fully in control of his own actions once again...

"No one, really... I guess I sort of assumed it from how everyone's been acting over the past few days. Ever since Steve got back from his last mission..." he looked up at the clock for a moment before continuing, "They've only been back ten hours, but all systems seem to be go down in the cells. Have been all night by the looks of it..."

"Rogers is back?" Last Cara had heard, Steve had been 'sent' (he often took off without telling anyone these days) to Southern Europe to track down the 'Winter Soldier' - the deadly assassin who had almost killed Director Fury a few years back. Sources and video footage had placed the killer's last location as Wakanda but they believed he was hiding out somewhere near Bucharest, Romania.

Clint cracked a smile once her hands ceased movement, "You really do miss out on a lot up here, don't you? He turned up around eleven last night just before I headed out. Didn't look too worse for wear either but he's been down in the holding cells all morning..."

"Locked up?" she questioned but he shook his head, his lips cracking into a disbelieving smile at her assumption.

"Not him. The guy he brought with him. The 'Winter Soldier'," Cara's eyes went wide and Clint noticed, "I know... I didn't believe it either until I saw him... He's in pretty bad shape, though. I don't know what Fury plans to do with him..."

"He's Steve's friend, isn't he?" She vaguely recalled Steve telling her about the assassin in a session not long after he and Romanoff had returned from being on the run. He'd been so cut up about it and she knew from the brief overview on his file that they'd been pretty close, but Steve blamed himself for everything that had happened. She hadn't heard anything about him from any other sources than Steve himself and it was pretty clear that memories of this 'Soldier' pained him to think about.

"Was, I think is the right word to use," he replied, concern and what looked like pity flooding his gaze as he looked towards the door, "Whoever that is down there... he sure isn't the same guy Steve described him as... Who knows what HYDRA's done to him?"

"Brainwashed?" She knew the answer before Clint even started to nod, "What are they going to do? Try to reverse it? Memories are hard to get back sometimes..."

He lifted his shoulders before dropping them in a shrug, "I don't know. I suppose all they can do is try..." He looked back up at the clock again, moving to stand up not long afterwards, "I better get back to Steve. I promised I'd be there for moral support after I'd seen you-"

A wave of guilt washed over her suddenly, "You should have said before. I didn't realise I was keeping you from your work-"

Clint waved a hand to stop her argument before she could go any further, "I chose to come and see you. Steve understands that, alright? Besides, I'd much prefer sitting talking with you than seeing that poor guy thrashing about in the restraints they've put him in. It was too much trauma for first thing in the morning... even worse than that morning in Budapest..."

He smirked but there was a seriousness behind it, his attempts to lighten the mood proving pointless if the mood was darker than a black hole. She chuckled softly and smiled, understanding the reference as he'd relayed the Budapest mission to her weeks after it had happened - it was a hilarious story but the fact it couldn't even trigger a real smile from him worried her...

"Tell Steve I'll help in any way I can. I can't imagine what it's like to see a close friend like that..." Cara herself had never really experienced loss, especially since she didn't have to worry about her family's safety because, as far as they knew, she'd emigrated to Australia when she turned twenty. SHIELD had been sending them regular postcards for the past eleven years so they didn't start to worry, insisting for them to stay where they were any time they suggested flying out to see her. It was sad in many ways because she knew she'd probably never see them again, but at least she knew where they were and that they were safe...

Steve had been given no such luxury, seeing his best friend turn up broken and battle-hardened after he'd seen him fall to his death three quarters of a century ago.

"Don't worry, I'll tell him," Clint assured her, crossing the room to the door, his feet moving soundlessly across the hard floor due to his expert training and skills. He turned just before he left, smiling slightly but his eyes said it was forced, "Hopefully I'll see you again later, but I'll see you in the morning if I don't, alright?"

"Alright," she nodded, watching the door close behind him and sighing before making her way back to her desk and flopping back in her chair. It was only half past nine and she was tired already; if she kept this up, she'd be asleep before lunch came...

Maybe she should have taken her sleeping pills the previous night...


	2. draft

Date: April 15th 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Office - 40th floor  
Time: 09:35

"-you know, you should come up here sometime, Bruce. You've been cooped up in that lab all week with your test tubes and whatever, and I'm not afraid to admit I miss your stupid face just a little," Cara laughed, trying to sound earnest as Bruce's chuckling reverberated through her earpiece. Up until recently, a real laugh from Banner had been a very rare thing, but since he returned from wherever he'd run off to after Sokovia the sound was meeting her ears more and more often.

She knew from Tony and Clint's ceaseless gossip that there was something significant going on between him and a certain red-headed assassin, but it wasn't her place to pass any sort of judgement on it, regardless of the fact that she'd been ecstatic to hear they were finally acting on their feelings for each other. 

After seeing them both almost every day and picking up on the slight indications whenever the other was mentioned, she knew better than anyone that it had been a long time coming...

He even seemed to be spending slightly less time in the lab because of it, though it had only amounted to about an hour outside it thus far. It was hopeless to expect anything more than that from him, especially since he'd never really been very social with the rest of the team, but at least it showed he was trying; trying to be more normal in spite of his 'condition'; trying to accept it as part of himself. They both knew it would take a while but Cara had assured him on many occasions that she would remain by his side throughout.

He'd managed to find a break in whatever he was currently doing in order to contact her, initially to question Tony's uncharacteristic absence though the subject had soon switched to other things with Bruce asking about her day and Cara returning the courtesy.

"Well, you should've thought about my stupid face before you encouraged Stark to take a break. Since you've got rid of my lab partner, I haven't really got much choice but to stay down here," he parried, the tone of his voice indicating his new-found smile was back, "I hate to say it, Cara, but you did bring this upon yourself..."

"Oh, I knew it'd be my fault somehow," she joked, crossing her ankles comfortably beneath her chair and resting her elbows on the smooth edge of the desk, "Seriously though, I feel like I haven't seen you in ages. When was the last time you actually came up here? Was it last week?"

"Last Thursday," he confirmed, his words accompanied by the sound of glass clinking in the background which proved her earlier point. He hadn't even stopped working to talk to her. Bruce probably wouldn't blame her if she got offended by that - he was prone to accidental ignorance due to how invested he was in his work - but she'd always understood.

He was similar to Clint, in a way. Both were constantly moving, subconsciously avoiding sitting down and thinking for even a moment, because then they would have to face their monsters, their demons and everything that dragged them back down. For Clint, it was his deafness, for Bruce, 'the other guy' - working kept their lives up in the air, out of the grasps of those demons lurking beneath the surface ready to snatch them back to the lowest moments they'd ever endured. It was a coping strategy, just like how Tony worked to forget his anxiety - it was a way of getting on with life despite all the crap pulling them back.

"It's definitely been too long... Hold on-" At the sound of a knock at the door, two sharp, successive raps echoing throughout the room, she held a hand over the microphone which hung down from her ear beside her mouth and addressed whoever was outside, "Come in!"

The door opened and she looked up to find a very unexpected person stood at the threshold, promptly holding up a finger to ask the new entrant to wait and uncovering the mic, "Uh, Bruce...? I'm going to have to go. Something's come up..." 

"Okay, I guess I'll probably see you later...?" His voice was slightly more distant as she presumed he'd moved away from the lab microphone during her momentary bout of silence, but it grew nearer when he heard her speak again, "It's nice to talk to someone other than Stark for a change. His babbling may amuse some people but they should try listening to it non-stop..."

"Sure, Bruce," she cracked a small, sympathetic smile before hanging up, turning off her earpiece and looking up at the new arrival to her office. He was still stood in the doorway, waiting patiently as he leant against the wall with his booted feet crossed, "Director Fury... what can I do for you?"

Fury straightened and stepped into the room, reaching forward and pulling the chair out opposite as the door swung closed behind him, slightly rustling his coat, "I don't want to intrude on your work, Nielsen. I hope that call to Banner wasn't important?"

He raised an eyebrow, looking across at her expectantly.

She shook her head quickly in reply as he sat down, "We were just talking about Tony. I-"

"Sent him on a break, I know. Pepper seems to be on top of everything. She phoned my office last night, too. I'm beginning to think she should work for us rather than Tony, but I suppose Stark would certainly have something to say against that idea," he said, resting his elbows on the arms of the chair and pressing the pads of his fingers together before turning a little more serious, "I suspect Barton has already informed you of the situation Rogers has brought to our hands?"

"The... 'Winter Soldier'? Yes, he mentioned it," she nodded, not wanting to drop Clint into trouble but the Director already seemed to know. He always seemed to know, "Is there something I can do to help...?"

Fury hummed, "We've agreed to call him Sergeant Barnes for now. It seems that's the only name he'll respond to at the moment and the nickname 'Bucky' is to remain unspoken in his presence until we are sure Hydra did not recapture him after the events at the Triskelion. He has been restrained in similar bonds to the ones we originally used for our friend Mr. Banner as we believe he's undergone a similar process as Steve did back in the day..."

"Clint said he was one of HYDRA's men...? I thought it was our side that had the serum?" Cara didn't know too much about how S.H.I.E.L.D. had operated in the Second World War, but from the things Steve had told her she'd learned enough about his own past with them and what they'd done.

"Recipes can be leaked. Spies can be overlooked," Fury pointed out, a hint of annoyance in his voice but she sensed it wasn't towards her, "All we know is that his body has been enhanced in both strength and stamina the same way that Rogers' was, there's no way of knowing if that's due to traitors on our side or spies on theirs. Either way, whoever the culprit was has been dead for years and we have the results chained up downstairs... His mind is fractured; broken by whatever training he's been through..." He paused for a moment and Cara swore she saw a flicker of pity in his eye, "He won't talk, and we have no way of knowing what he can and cannot remember..."

Fury's presence in her office started to make sense now, "And... you want my help?"

He met her gaze with his single, uncovered eye, "We want a little more than help... If you're willing - and only if you're willing, Miss Nielsen - we'd like you to monitor Sergeant Barnes for however long it takes for him to recover. Think of him as a new patient - a potentially dangerous and volatile patient, but a patient nonetheless..."

"...What about my other patients? The other agents shouldn't be pushed to second place like they would if I agreed to this..." Cara had no idea why she was even considering this. The guy was dangerous like Fury had just said, he had no idea who he was or what was going on around him, there was no knowing how he would react to her methods of therapy and she'd never had a patient with issues as deep as she'd just heard. She could deal with super soldiers if they were calm like Steve but she got the feeling Rogers was a puppy compared to this guy... 

"We have a newly acquired agent starting tomorrow, trained as a therapist over in Michigan. Your current patients would be transferred to her while your schedule would be completely erased and reassigned to Sergeant Barnes," he explained, seemingly unsurprised by the premature agreement her mouth had decided before consulting her brain, "You would have to be prepared at all times to offer support for him, no matter what time of the day..."

He trailed off, probably expecting another question but she was too busy thinking about the proposal. Being up all the time wouldn't be too much of a problem - despite her insistence on sleep for her patients, she herself was a chronic insomniac, though no one knew that but her and Fury. Perhaps that was the reason she'd been the first port of call for the job, there was hardly any chance she wouldn't be alert at all times of day and night - perfect for a patient whose outbursts and episodes could occur haphazardly and without warning.

She knew the Avengers wouldn't be too impressed with the change - she'd been their sole therapist for over five years now and she'd gained their trust - but the issues they had were mostly easy to solve if the therapist had the right training and Cara had no doubt Fury wouldn't have anything less than perfect for them. She would know; it took him six years to even consider her for the role.

"Can I have some more time to consider it?" she questioned after about thirty seconds, looking over her desk at him with her hands clasped in front of her, "I'd like to think over the conditions, if that's okay?"

Fury nodded solemnly, "I can postpone the change until first thing tomorrow morning. That's when the new therapist will arrive and be introduced to the crew; it depends on your decision whether that crew is in the control room or if it's the Avengers and your other patients."

"Don't you have anyone else to monitor Sergeant Barnes? Another therapist perhaps?" She wasn't sure why but she had a niggling feeling she already knew the answer; already knew how Fury would reply.

"No. You're the only one I'm prepared to trust with this information and this job. Therefore, I have to insist you don't mention this to anyone outside of the Avengers, no other agents have trustable clearance levels to be informed about his presence here."

"And if I say no?" By this point, she'd already admitted to herself that her answer would be positive, but she wanted to know every possibility, just in case her heart caught up to what her mind was doing. Deep down, she felt a tug to stay at her current job with the Avengers who trusted her but in her head she'd already convinced herself that it was her role as an agent to be flexible - if that meant throwing herself in the deep end with an unknown assassin, then so be it...

If anything, she owed it to Steve to at least try, especially after bearing witness to how the return of this presumed-dead best friend had shaken him last time.

"Then we'll search long and hard for another agent suitably skilled to take Sergeant Barnes on full time. If it took months, we'd take the risk and wait until we had a trained therapist. I'm not prepared to allow an amateur to try their luck with someone as damaged as James Barnes," Fury concluded, tilting his head to one side as though he was assessing her reaction. He probably was. "We just want to get Steve his best friend back."

"I'll get back to you promptly in the morning," she promised and he nodded, getting to his feet and standing before her. He was a rather intimidating man, powerful and stern, but Cara had known the Director for over a decade and no longer felt fear in his presence. It was like the great rule of authority - if you were nice to him, he was nice to you.

"I don't doubt it, Miss Nielsen, but nevertheless I'd like you to come with me to the cell we're currently holding him in. I realise it's probably best for you to meet your patient before making any decisions on whether to take him on," he headed over to the door, turning to look back at her and gesturing with a tilt of his head towards the corridor outside, "Come along, I'll take you there."

Cara quickly moved to flip through her appointment book, but he interrupted her train of thought before it even left the station, "You don't have any. I already made sure of it. Now, come on..." Something told her he wasn't going to ask again.

\--------------

Date: April 15th 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Elevator   
Time: 09:42

Fury led Cara downstairs via the elevator, his strides twice the length of her own, forcing her to jog ever so slightly in order to keep up with him. They walked the whole journey in silence, neither really having anything to say that could elaborate on what had already been discussed in her office so speech was absent apart from a quick greeting to familiar agents who pulled her from her pensive thoughts as they passed by.

"See you later, Sebastian," Cara smiled as Agent Stan stepped off on the weapons training floor, his customary smile beaming back at her before he headed down the corridor and out of sight as the doors closed. 

He was a recent addition to her patient schedule, having only become a regular visitor to her office after he suffered the loss of his long time mission partner on a routine heist that went wrong in the worst possible way. She didn't know the details (she wasn't sure if she wanted to) but the guy had been traumatised for weeks. He was coping well enough now, but she still insisted on seeing him every three days to check up on him, making sure he didn't lapse back into his trauma and waste everything they'd built on. He was still young, mid-twenties - he didn't need to be dwelling on a death, consumed by grief for the rest of his life...

Cara figured that would all be up in the air if she took this new job. There was no way this new therapist would maintain constant contact with a patient if he seemed fully recovered - she only did it because she'd rather ensure they were safe than see the potential consequences if her observations were wrong. 

Looks could be deceiving... they could hide the most deadly disorders and debilitating mental problems if you didn't look closely enough. Disaster often hid in plain sight.

She made a mental note to check in every so often with all her casual patients if she had downtime from Sergeant Barnes - it was the only way she'd have peace of mind with someone taking over her job, especially since she was sworn not to tell anyone about their problems (not even her own replacement). What happened in therapy stayed in therapy.

By this point, she stopped for a moment to realise her mind was seriously contemplating taking the offer Fury had made. Somehow, she was spending more time thinking of the benefits to Steve than the downsides of the role, thus convincing herself it was a good idea. From what she'd been told, it would certainly put her skills to the test but, deep down, it felt like betraying S.H.I.E.L.D.'s and Fury's trust if she didn't take it...

They exited the elevator on the 2nd floor (below ground with only the archives beneath it) reserved for special criminal cases. It used to be coined as the 'Hulk Detainment Floor' before Banner started to control his anger more effectively and was also where Loki had first been imprisoned - the mischievous demigod she'd never had the misfortune of meeting but had heard lots about from the news and the other agents he'd crossed paths with. After all that, it was safe to say it was potentially the most secure floor in the building, with walls two feet thick and no windows per se but some natural imitation lighting which simulated the brightness outside to prevent prisoners going insane (or more so than they already were).

Fury marched down the long corridor the elevator opened onto, his coat billowing slightly around his legs as she followed hastily behind him. About half way down, they reached a door which read 'Secure Holding Cell 03'. Something told Cara she didn't particularly want to know who or what occupied one and two...

"You'll have to go in alone from here. Sergeant Barnes wasn't too happy to see me earlier due to the fact he believed I was dead - himself being the one who killed me," Fury explained, nodding towards the password protected lock, "I'll let you in. Head straight to your left and you'll find Captain Rogers. He's been there ever since Barnes was brought in. Your potential patient is on the other side of a pane of bulletproof glass so you can assess him before making your decision... Good luck..."

His sincere tone was worrying her to no end. She opened her mouth to ask what she needed luck for but he was already typing in a code, the door beeping twice before opening onto a dark corridor with a door at the end she guessed was the only thing standing between them and Sergeant Barnes. 

Taking a deep breath, she glanced up at Fury who nodded back at her, an unintelligible look in his eye. She had always struggled to read him like she did her patients and had wondered why ever since she met him. Fury was an enigma, unreadable and unpredictable - the two reasons she'd hesitated to trust him for so many years. If she was truly honest, deep down, she still didn't.

He left without another word as the door clanged shut behind her, probably sealing electromagnetically, locking them inside. That presumption didn't exactly improve her worries or calm her nerves...

Fidgeting nervously with the zip of her jacket, she stepped forwards into a brightly lit room, the light murmur of hushed voices buzzing like static in the air. Three dark walls were thick metal, reflecting the light from the lamps on the ceiling, but the fourth was a huge, clear section of glass, giving direct access to the holding room behind it. The holding room where, chained up and heavily restrained, a man who couldn't have been much older than thirty thrashed and yelled silently, his long black hair sticking to his face with sweat.

The noise he was making was muffled by the sheer thickness of the glass, but it was still just audible over the hubbub in the room she was stood in. Surprisingly, it was seemingly ignored by all the scientists and examiners bustling around, but was the primary focus of one man who stood in the centre of the room, his forearms folded across his chest and a concerned look etched into his features as though they were made of the same ice he was frozen in.

He alone turned and looked as she walked in, somehow hearing her entrance despite the commotion drowning her footsteps out. A forced and weary smile graced his lips as she came to stand beside him, "Clint just left... I was beginning to think you weren't coming. In all honesty, I wouldn't blame you if you hightailed out of here after one look at Buc- I mean, James..."

"He's your best friend, Steve. Of course I'd come down here," she tilted her head up at him, seeing tiredness like no other in his eyes, "I should tell you... Fury's asked me to be Sergeant Barnes' full-time psychiatrist and therapist-"

He wasn't simply tired from lack of sleep or depleted energy, the tiredness she saw was an emotional one. He was exhausted because he felt too much, because he'd tried for so long to get his friend back and now, the man in front of them was no longer the friend he'd fought for. Hydra had taken that away from him over seventy years ago...

Steve was completely and utterly drained.

"I know. I was the one who recommended you," he sighed, tearing his eyes away from the sight on the other side of the glass and looking down at her, "Don't look so surprised. There's no one else I would trust to deal with Buck- James..."

"I thought it was Fury's idea...?"

Steve glanced over at his distressed friend for a few seconds before speaking, "No. He originally wanted the new therapist to take him on but I insisted it should be someone who understands his past rather than some amateur straight out of college. I'm sure she's very good at her job but I think letting her loose on James would be like throwing her in the deep end... Just look at him - she wouldn't last a week..."

Cara, too, turned her gaze to the soldier trying to fight his way out of the restraints and tubes he was held down by, his teeth clenched and his forehead drenched with sweat. His eyes were wild with fear and anger but there was a confusion there, too, darting about the room and glaring at the board of scientists sat within his eye line as he yelled continuously to deaf ears. Steve was right - going from a college course to this could easily cause a therapist to need a therapist themselves. Sergeant Barnes' state begged for professional help.

"I understand his past, but surely you know it better than anyone? I mean, you lived through it with him..." she pointed out. The only parts she knew were what Steve had revealed to her in sessions; things such as Sergeant Barnes' death, the super soldier serum and Peggy Carter. Nowhere near enough to help Barnes recover and remember.

Looking at him now, it was safe to say that James Barnes had survived the fall from the train all those years ago, how much of him she couldn't be sure, but whatever Hydra had done since then was the real problem. If they'd tampered with his mind too much, trying to recollect his memories could be disastrous and leave him a babbling mess - he was going to be the most extreme case she'd ever taken on and this was coming from someone who had spent the last four years taming the literal Hulk.

His infamous metal arm was heavily clamped between two slabs of metal, immobilising him but not preventing the rest of his body from thrashing around in his attempts to get free. She only hoped the clamp could match his strength...

"I may know his life but I don't know a single thing about psychiatry, Cara. You know enough about both to be able to support his recovery. Think of it as a happy medium... We both save lives in different ways. I've tried to save him my way and failed so now I'm handing him over to you. He doesn't even know me..." Steve offered, not looking away from his best friend as he spoke solemnly.

"He will," Cara's response was quiet but it was a promise nonetheless and Steve nodded, his teeth gnawing at his bottom lip. He opened his mouth after a few moments just as one of the scientists sat in front of them interrupted their conversation.

"Uh, Sir?" he asked, his voice shaky as she figured Steve could be quite intimidating to those who didn't know he was a huge softy, "He's only going to injure himself further if we leave him in this state. We would suggest sedating him but... well, we follow your orders..."

"Wait, what's his cerebral status?" Cara questioned quickly before Steve had a chance to answer, "I'd like to know what I'm going to be working with."

Another scientist answered instead, "We can't find any traces of chemicals or anything altering his brain tissue. The hostile behaviour we're witnessing currently is, at our best guess, triggered by the new surroundings and his confusion. He probably thinks we're the enemy. Sedating him would be best until someone can talk to him..."

Cara looked up at Steve who remained silent and still, continuing to gaze ahead at the wreck of a being in the other room. He didn't speak for a good while as they looked at him expectantly. Then, he sighed quietly and resignedly, pulling his eyes away from the sight, "Sedate him... I can't bear to see him like this any longer..."

The first scientist nodded and typed something into the console, the entire room turning to watch. Everyone except Steve...

He turned his back to the glass as some form of blue-ish tranquilliser was steadily pumped into Sergeant Barnes' forearms, causing his thrashing to become lethargic before halting all together as he slipped into unconsciousness. After a few moments and bated breaths, his body went limp against the chair he was chained to, his eyelids falling closed over the madness behind them. Silence coated the room for a second as all eyes looked at his sleeping form before the volume rose again as they were all satisfied he was out.

Cara was the only one who didn't look away. Instead, she kept her focus on the unconscious man, seeing what her eventual target would be in the calm and peace of his tired features. In sleep, all of the anger and fury was washed away, only the real man underneath it all remaining, finally resembling the man from the stories Steve had told her, the man who was almost a brother to the Captain and the man he looked up to throughout his youth.

And in that moment, amongst the hustle and bustle around them, she further solidified her promise to Steve, Fury and Bucky himself that she would bring that man back from the depths of Sergeant Barnes' mind she knew he was still trapped in. There was no way she was giving up on him now...


	3. draft

Date: April 15th 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Stairs  
Time: 10:05

After leaving Steve with his own thoughts and his best friend who no doubt occupied them, Cara headed upstairs with the intention of talking to Fury in his office. She gave one last, long look in the direction of Sergeant Barnes' slumped and shackled figure, his calm expression offsetting the guarded environment he now found himself in.

She couldn't even begin to fathom what was going on beneath that head of unruly hair. For all she knew, he really was an empty shell, emotionless and ruthless, but a flicker of something she'd seen in those dark eyes said otherwise. Perhaps she'd been imagining it, but amidst the anger and confusion she swore she caught a glimmer of the man from Steve's war stories. 

The man who'd saved so many lives - but had taken so many more - and was now in need of saving himself.

Taking the stairs for the first three floors of the journey before opting to step into an elevator on floor seven, she began to form some idea of what to say to the director in her head. Her fingers tapped subconsciously against the metal rail behind her, matching her heart beat for beat as the number above the door rose higher and higher.

Huffing a decisive sigh after a few moments and raking a hand through her hair, she reached up and switched her earpiece on, calling Fury's office directly despite already heading there.

"Agent Nielsen." After a few seconds of empty static as the call connected, his somewhat surprised voice echoed in her ear, "I'll admit I though it would take you longer to decide. It seems I was wrong."

"Sir... I've assessed the patient and I think it would be foolish to allow someone who isn't familiar with Steve and Barnes' past to treat him," Cara replied carefully, taking caution to use the correct words. Simply accepting the job on the basis of being Steve's friend wasn't a wise thing to do or admit to, no matter how true it was, "Therefore, I will accept the role of his therapist and psychiatrist..."

Her acceptance was, of course, primarily because of her friendship with Steve, but she couldn't tell Fury that. Legally, she could lose her job if she ever admitted it since it was a breach of protocol for her to become close to her patients, but Fury himself had always overlooked that, stating that the Avengers were an exception to the rule. Nevertheless, it was safer to give a more professional reason for treating Barnes, if only to avoid any scrutiny from the board if anything went wrong during the treatment.

If she was recorded to have accepted the role for personal reasons, the board could quite easily shift any blame onto her if things did indeed go pear-shaped.

The last thing she needed while recovering the broken shards of Sergeant Barnes were legal faux pas she could avoid. She needed to focus entirely on his treatment if it was to be worthwhile - he deserved for someone to at least try...

He wasn't supposed to be angry. She could tell from the look in his eyes and the confusion that lingered there that the anger coated the real man like a thick coat of tar, blocking himself from the world with fury and subsequently suffocating him. Whatever Hydra had done to him, she was determined to pull him back from their depths if not only for Steve but for the rest of the Avengers, too. Sergeant Barnes could be a valuable asset to their team, if only he could be set free from the bonds that shackled his mind...

"Is that right?" Fury's tone was one of surprise but she heard no sincerity in it, as though he already knew what her decision would be, "Well, Nielsen, I'm sure you understand what you're letting yourself in for. Steve will be thrilled as I'm sure he's no doubt told you it was all his idea - it wasn't. I just let him think I was letting a new therapist treat Barnes simply to test if I was right to choose you. When he insisted on you, my choice was confirmed, but I think we should let him believe what he wants to right now, don't you, Agent? He's got a troubling few months ahead..."

"I aim to make it as easy as possible for both of them, Sir. I know they've been through a lot," Cara nodded in response regardless of the fact he couldn't see her. Realistically, it wouldn't surprise her at all if there were cameras watching her in the elevator, but Fury had never been a fan of spying so if anyone was watching her, it wasn't him.

"I'm certain my trust in you isn't misplaced, Nielsen, and I know Steve's isn't either. He trusts you more than anyone and I honestly can't find any reason to blame him for his adamance," Fury replied, his voice fading a little and then coming back into focus as the elevator walls no doubt disrupted the signal, "I'll inform the Avengers promptly, and then-"

"Actually, Director, I feel like they might take the news better if it comes from me?" she tried, cutting him off and suspecting he wouldn't allow it as she reached across and pressed the button for the Avengers' floor just before she reached it, the elevator sliding to a smooth halt and the doors opening. Stepping out, she looked up and down the corridor, "I'm on their floor now since I was heading up to see you..."

Fury, however, surprised her, "As much as I enjoy your company, you may be correct in that thinking... Yes, you should talk to them, you can explain the situation much more sensitively than I could."

"I didn't mean anything by it, Sir..." Her footsteps rang against the hard floor as she turned right and headed towards the lounge area where most of the agents would be. They didn't have any missions today but she'd received notifications on her laptop that everyone has signed into headquarters so they all had to be around somewhere - except Tony who had signed out over an hour ago, Bruce who was always at the north end of the floor in the lab and Vision who spent most of his time on the roof nowadays, city-watching and fueling his intense interest in human society.

"No, I know you didn't, Agent. Contrary to what many people may think, I do know sensitivity isn't exactly my forte, so to speak..." There was laughter in Fury's voice, perhaps amusement at his own expense - something very rare among the senior agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. "It's probably best I leave you to it."

An abrupt beep in her ear signalled him hanging up and she reached a hand up to cut off her earpiece as she rounded the corner into the lounge. Stopping in her tracks, she had to blink a few times to fully take in the scene she was met with, her eyes barely believing the extent of the chaos. S.H.I.E.L.D. would be crippled by shame if the media even caught a glimpse of what she was seeing.

Sprawled out on the couch, in full Asgardian armour, was Thor. His legs were suspended against the back and his head hung barely inches from the floor as he lay munching on an assortment of candy Wanda was levitating before his eyes, greatly amusing her as she sat cross-legged in front of him but visibly scaring Thor. Sam was seemingly asleep on the opposite couch, but an irritated yelp escaped his mouth every few seconds and he absently swatted his hand at a flash of blue which darted past him. It didn't exactly take a genius to see that Pietro was behind the slapping of Sam's face as a low chuckle met her ears every time the blur passed by.

The two assassins, having seemingly given up on taming their teammates, were sat at the breakfast bar - Clint on a stool, Nat perched on the surface itself with one leg pulled up beneath her and the other dangling off the edge. In front of them lay a Scrabble board, half-completed as they appeared to have opted for a game while the craziness unfolded itself around them.

Natasha's complaining was the only sound from their direction as her manicured fingers removed the tiles Clint had placed down only seconds before, "I don't know why I agreed to play this with you... 'Thinked' is not, and never will be, a word..."

Clint, with newly adjusted hearing aids, looked up at her and smirked, "It ain't my fault you can't handle my vocabulary, Tasha. I thought that was why you agreed to play...?"

"No. I'm pretty sure it was because Bruce is busy. He's smart. He doesn't cheat, unlike some people..." she countered with a smirk of her own as the archer pouted mockingly.

As she spoke, Nat glanced up from the board she was scouring and surprise flickered in her eyes for a moment when she saw Cara stood watching them a short distance away. She didn't acknowledge her in any way as Clint continued to argue his point, but she'd definitely seen her, quirking an eyebrow in her direction while he wasn't looking.

"I don't cheat. Okay, sometimes I might make up a few words..." he shrugged as Natasha shook her head disbelievingly, "but, it's innovation. In fifty years time, I'll be the new Shakespeare and you'll be sorry you ever doubted me-"

"Show us what you got, then, Clinton Shakespeare," Cara made him flinch as she suddenly made her presence behind his chair known and spoke right beside his head. Laughing at the terrified look on his face, Natasha leaned back on her hands and arched her back slightly as Cara stepped around the bar and into his view, "I'm waiting for a show of literary talent and I'd hate to be disappointed..."

"I told you not to call me that..." he muttered with a frown, referring to the use of his full name. Adjusting his posture to face her, he unsubtly forced a subject change, "Why are you up here? I thought you were busy?"

"I thought the same about you. You told me you were going down to see Steve, yet when I got there you'd already left," she replied, "I thought you were trying to avoid me..." She grinned at the last accusation, assuring him it was a joke.

"Why were you down the-"

"Fury already spoke to you about it, then?" Clint interrupted Natasha's question with his own, wincing suddenly as Cara caught a glimpse of Nat's foot swiftly hitting his lower ribs, "I suppose that's why you're up here..."

He didn't seem too surprised about it but Natasha was thoroughly confused, her forehead puckering as she narrowed her eyes. Pietro, who had postponed his bullying of Sam to come and eavesdrop, also appeared beside them in a blur, "Spoke to you about what? I have missed something, no?"

The concern in the twin's eyes immediately filled Cara with guilt. Although he'd never admit it, what Hydra had done to Pietro and his sister had caused him to feel very lost despite his ability to get anywhere in seconds and, ever since the deal with Ultron, he'd become a regular patient. They were both fortunate that Hydra hadn't destroyed them irreversibly and they were recovering at a steady rate, but Sergeant Barnes seemed to have run out of luck in that department...

She tore her gaze away from his as her heart continued to sink into the depths of her ribcage, settling just above her stomach. Huffing a sigh through her nose, she glanced around as more of the room began to take notice of their conversation, finding no other option than to address the whole group as one to get it over and done with. Clint already knew, presumably from Steve, and she trusted Bruce and Vision would understand but she wasn't as certain about the rest.

All eyes gradually turned to her, the candy dropping to the floor with a light thud while Thor clambered upright and sat as attentively as the Norse god could sit, only getting slightly distracted by the candy at his feet but tearing his gaze away from it, "Lady Cara, what is it that ails you?"

Sam sat up, too, though his gaze was intently fixed on Cara rather than the others around her, "Is it Barnes?" 

Everyone looked at him, including Cara and Clint, both bewildered that he knew anything about it - the rest of the Avengers weren't even supposed to know Steve was back. "What?" he questioned tensely, suddenly met by a sea of confused faces as he straightened up and stood from the couch, "I saw Steve get back last night just before I headed home. Stark was showing me some improvements he'd come up with for my wings and the lower floors were on lockdown when I went out. I kinda put two and two together and figured he'd brought the 'Winter Princess' back with him. I mean, who else would Steve jeopardise a mission for and who but a super soldier could make S.H.I.E.L.D. go on major lockdown?"

Cara was beginning to think she'd underestimated the sheer amount Sam payed attention to. Usually, he was very disconnected from the world when he came to her sessions, his mind troubled by the past but covered up by his cockiness, but now that she saw him outside of the normal office environment she could see how valuable he was to the team. He was smart, like Tony, but not too cocky; strong, like Steve, but more knowledgeable about the present; skilled, like Clint and Natasha, but with battle experience and equipment beyond either of their uses.

Sam was like all of them rolled into one - the complete Avengers package. The perfect asset for S.H.I.E.L.D.

"Yes. Sam's right," she nodded, deciding to just go with what Sam had said rather than explaining the actual reason why the super soldier was in the building. Details weren't necessary, "Steve brought in the assassin known as the 'Winter Soldier'. His mind has been broken by Hydra and he's not looking great. I've been asked to help him recover..."

"When? When will you start?" Natasha spoke up, not asking the obvious questions such as 'why' since she'd probably already worked that out after her last encounter with him.

Cara turned to her, facing away from the others, unable to bear seeing their face as she said, "Tomorrow morning... I'm required to be there whenever I'm needed... at all times of the day..."

"...What if we need you? We just have to wait until you are finished with this Midgardian soldier?" Thor questioned loudly behind her as Natasha nodded solemnly, not requiring any more information to come to the correct conclusion. As she drew her attention back to the game by her feet, Cara couldn't bear to give Thor a reply.

Thankfully, she didn't need to. "We're being transferred?" Sam concluded quietly but audibly, his resolute tone making it more of a statement than a question.

"You are leaving us?" Wanda's voice was small and filled with disbelief, her eyes mirroring it as Cara forced herself to look at them all.

"I'm not leaving you," she countered slowly, her voice threatening to crack but she remained strong, feeling Clint come and stand by her shoulder as some sort of support, "I'll still be here, just... not all the time. Sergeant Barnes will be my first priority while you guys will be placed on someone else's schedule - a newly trained therapist. She knows just as much as I do, if not more, but I'm needed elsewhere..."

"What if we do not want to see her? What if we want to see you?"

The whole room looked to Pietro as he spoke before turning back to her, expectant gazes falling on her face, "You'll still see me around... I just- I can't work with you guys while I'm working with him. He's going to need a lot of attention and hard work... right, Clint?"

The archer nodded, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder, "I've seen the state he's in. It's not pretty but Fury, Steve and I think Cara is the best for him... I mean, we all know from experience that she's the best therapist ever..." He grinned after the last part, looking to the group for a response.

"She is," Sam agreed, nodding, too, "His mind's really messed up, but if anyone can sort it, it's Cara, and we all know it..."

The three of them, joined quickly by Natasha who wordlessly accepted the idea, looked towards Thor, Pietro and Wanda for a few moments. They didn't speak, possibly because they couldn't find the words, but, one by one, they all nodded their heads.

"I shall miss you," Thor managed with all the emotion Asgardians could possibly show (which wasn't much in retrospect) after about a minute of silence, his words almost bringing Cara to tears.

"We'll all miss you," Sam concluded, presumably voicing everyone else's thoughts as they nodded in agreement, "but we'll manage... Sergeant Barnes needs you more at the moment..."

"...Thank you, guys... I'll miss you all, too," she sniffed, Clint's grip around her shoulder getting firmer as he pulled her gently into a side hug, "Thank you for understanding..."

"You just focus on getting Barnes better. We can wait a couple of months until you come back," Clint said quietly, his chin resting on the top of her head, "We'll all be here whenever you need us."

\-------------

Date: April 15th 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Office - 3rd floor  
Time: 14:56

Cara spent the rest of the day moving all of her belongings from her old office to the new one Fury had allocated for her on the third floor, right next door to the heavy duty, demigod-detaining cell which had been similarly allocated for Sergeant Barnes to move into at some unknown point during the night. It was currently empty as the soldier was still in the original holding cell a floor below, but a couple of agents had already passed her in the corridor, taking numerous things into it in order to make it a bit less prison-like for his stay.

There was no way his animalistic side would wane if the room he slept in felt like a cage.

Clint and Sam had both volunteered to help with all the carrying of books and furniture, meaning she was left reluctantly holding just her laptop as they lugged the desk into the elevator. The new therapist had apparently requested the office to be empty for her arrival so every last thing had to be moved out - Cara had no idea what she planned to do without a desk but she knew it wasn't her place to criticise the methods of another therapist.

"Just put it in the corner, guys," she called from the doorway, her voice echoing back off the bare walls she was planning to cover somehow, "Yeah, around there..."

The two of them lowered it beside the wall before dropping it with a soft thud onto the wooden floor. Clint straightened up with a groan, rolling his shoulders, "Whose idea was it to carry this thing from the fortieth floor? It weighs a ton!"

"Uh, I believe you were the one who insisted. I was going to ask Bruce to help but you were determined to act tough and manly..." Cara pointed out as Sam leaned against the door frame, stretching his left arm across his chest and cracking his elbow.

"She's right, Barton, I heard the whole thing," he grinned, looking up at his removal partner who rolled his eyes in return, "Roll your eyes all you want but you can't argue the Hulk is stronger than you. You should've left it to me and him-"

"I managed, didn't I? I got it down here," Clint argued, shrugging it off.

"Yeah, 'cause I totally wasn't holding most of the weight-"

"Okay, guys!" Cara butted in, holding both hands up to silence them before things turned into an ugly, testosterone-fueled mess, "Clint, you're strong enough, alright? Sam, stop picking on him - it's not his fault he's weak..."

"Hey!" Sam laughed as Clint pulled an indignant face, "I thought you were on my side, Cara..."

"I am. Or, at least, I will be once both bookshelves and the couch have been brought down here..." she smirked, patting them both on the shoulders as they groaned simultaneously, "Go on, or I'll call Bruce and Steve. They'll do it in half the time-"

Before she'd even finished her sentence, the two of them were out the door and racing towards the elevator. She watched them go, laughing at their attempts to look better and stronger than each other - it was the one thing she knew would get them riled up and they never failed to entertain.

Shaking her head in disbelief, she turned to go back into the new office when a bleeping in her ear signalled an incoming call. Calming her laughter as best she could, she answered, "Yep, Agent Nielsen?"

"Cara, it's me," an unexpected voice replied as she walked over to her desk and perched on the edge of it since the chair was still stood in her office upstairs.

"Bruce? Two times in one day?" she smiled, crossing her ankles, "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

He chuckled at the other end, "Don't get too excited, I don't exactly bear thrilling news. Fury wants me to show you something we've been working on for a while. He thinks it will give you a bit more of a chance when dealing with our... newest arrival..."

Assuming he was referring to Sergeant Barnes, she hopped off the desktop and headed back towards the door, "Alright, I'm heading up now... I guess you've been informed about the therapy situation...?"

Bruce was silent for a moment before replying, "Yeah... do the others know yet? I haven't had chance to leave the lab at all this morning."

"I told them about half an hour ago," she admitted, deciding to take the opposite elevator to the one the guys went in so they didn't get in each other's way, "I think they all took it pretty well, considering..."

"What about Tony?"

"I haven't been thinking about what to tell Tony yet... He's supposed to be on holiday - if he finds out now, he'll come back straight away and cause a scene..." she pointed out as he hummed in somewhat reluctant agreement.

"You realise he'll do that anyway when he does return... right? He depends on your sessions to help him cope..." 

Cara sighed, pressing the button for the Avengers floor, "Don't make me feel any worse about it, Bruce... I already feel guilty enough as it is, but Fury's trusted me with Barnes' case..."

"I know that. Believe me, I understand what you're saying, Cara. I just thought I'd make sure you knew what's coming straight for your door when Tony gets back... He won't warm to this new therapist, you and I both know that," he reasoned as the elevator shot past floors in seconds, rising towards the fifty-second where Bruce was.

Tapping her boot against the floor, she brought her hand up to her face, brushing a stray hair out of her eyes and behind her ear, "I know but what can I do? I can't abandon a highly unstable patient just to make Stark happy..."

"Why not leave it to the new therapist, then? Why not let her take on Barnes?" Bruce questioned, the sound of the doors opening barely affecting the volume of his voice in her ear, "Surely she's qualified?"

"You haven't seen the state he's in, Bruce. She wouldn't last a day..."

"Not to be rude," he said as she drew closer to the lab, her reflection following her in the glass panes which lined the corridor, "but how do you know you will?"

"I don't," she replied frankly, reaching the door that separated them and quickly punching in the security code while looking straight at the eye-level camera as it identified her. Once the computer was satisfied, the door opened with a low hiss, allowing bright light from the laboratory to flood into the corridor before she stepped inside, "but I owe it to Steve as a colleague and friend to give it my best shot..."

"Of course... Barnes is his best friend... I should've known you weren't just doing it for a pay rise," she heard his voice twice - once through her earpiece and once more just around the corner from the doorway, "One of these days, your overwhelming compassion will backfire on you, you know?"

"As long as it's not any time soon, I'm not worried in the slightest." As she rounded the shelves packed with numerous different wires and pieces of equipment, Cara switched off her earpiece and walked over to where Bruce was stood, slaving over his laptop and scribbling away on a tatty notepad on the worktop beside it, "So, what's this that Fury wanted me to see?"

She watched from a slight distance, leaning against the back of a chair as he reached forward and pressed the off button on the speaker in front of him. He hadn't really felt comfortable with an earpiece when he'd first been introduced to S.H.I.E.L.D. so they'd provided the speaker which linked up to everyone else's and, even though he was fine with them now, the speaker had just stayed put.

"These," he spoke up after opening one of the many cold cupboards the lab contained, sending freezing liquid nitrogen spilling a few feet across the floor, a centimetre or so clear of the toes of Bruce's canvas shoes as he held up a clear case with bright coloured objects inside, "are something Stark and I created way back when I had trouble controlling 'the other guy'." He placed the container next to his laptop as Cara saw that around thirty identical cases were piled up in the cupboard behind him, "They're strong enough to take him down so they shouldn't be a problem when dealing with Barnes..."

As he spoke, he pulled the lid away from the rest of the case, revealing six syringes filled with red, yellow and blue substances, two of each colour, "What do they do?"

"I was getting to that," he laughed lightly, picking out one of each and laying them on the worktop. "Yellow," he pointed to each one as he explained it's purpose, "is a weak tranquilliser. It will act like a numbing agent similar to those used by doctors but much stronger so it can work across the entire body to bring the person to a standstill but keep them conscious."

"Blue works like a temporary shot of ecstasy, making the body more compliant if the subject becomes hostile. His mind will still be angry but his body will be relaxed long enough for you to get out of the line of fire," as he picked that one up, Cara made a mental note to have the blue ones closest to her at all times, "Then, red is a strong sedative which should knock a man of any size out cold in five seconds flat. Fury is having a sort of utility belt made for you so they can be carried safely with you any time you need them."

"That'll be handy. At least with these I'll have some sort of defence..."

"Exactly," Bruce nodded, packing the needles back into their case and walking back to the cupboard, "I assume Fury not allowing any guards in with you was part of your demands...?"

Cara looked across at him in confusion, "No. I never specified that... but now that you mention it, I wouldn't want an escort anyway. I need Barnes to trust me without being scared of me."

"Perhaps he figured that one out for himself. It's creepy how much that man knows before we do..." He closed the door and turned back to her, shaking his head, "I swear he can read minds..."

"I wouldn't go that far, but it is kinda his job to know everything..." Bruce wasn't wrong about it being creepy, though - she swore Fury knew more than anyone in S.H.I.E.L.D. did sometimes.

"I guess you've got to head back to your brand new office now, then?" he sounded slightly disheartened but he was very good at not showing it in his expression or posture.

She smiled in reply, shaking her head and just catching a look of pure surprise on his face before it flickered out of existence, "Actually, no. I've got Sam and Clint on the job and I think I might suffocate if I spend much more time with that much testosterone in one room..."

"Coffee, then?" he offered hopefully, clearing a space in the papers that coated with the table and pulling up two stools.

"As long as you're not busy?" she asked, making sure she wasn't intruding before sitting down.

"It can wait. I haven't had a proper sit down in ages," he insisted before disappearing round the corner into the maze of shelves and equipment. Just as she began to fear the sheer amount of science had devoured him, she heard him shout, "I'll put the kettle on!"

Sighing, she took a seat and basked for a moment in a break from the chaos that had seemed to be following her all day... If she was frank with herself, she knew this would be one of the last moments of calm she'd see for the next few months...

She had to savour it while she could.


	4. draft

Date: April 15th 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Office - 3rd floor  
Time: 22:03

When it eventually seemed no one had anything else to talk to her about, the newly placed clock on the wall of her office read ten pm and Cara decided it was time to turn in if she wanted to be alert for the first session with Barnes in the morning. He had been relocated to the stronghold next to her office while she was in the lab, escorted under heavily armed guard and tranquillised for easy transfer from the holding cell to his new, slightly more permanent home. Reportedly, there hadn't been any issues while he was under, but he was still aggressive as soon as he came round.

When she'd looked in on him a few hours before, he'd still been cuffed to the bed, yelling his head off, but the noise wouldn't disturb anyone since the walls of his cell were soundproofed. The only person there to be disturbed anyway was Cara herself since all the previous residents had been moved to other places, meaning the grand total of inhabitants for the third floor was two. A raging, confused super soldier... and then her.

She could already tell it was going to be lonely, but she hadn't exactly been around a lot of people in her old office; the only difference was the number of patients she had in her schedule, going down from thirty or more to just a solitary one. 

Quietly, she locked up her office and pocketed the keys with a clunk as they caught her SHIELD-issued mobile, heading down the corridor to her newly allocated living quarters down the other end. She had no choice but to pass the cell on the way as it was in the centre of the floor, though it made a chill run down her spine as she did so, almost as though someone was whispering to her, daring her to peer inside.

Unable to block out the daring voice in her mind, she came to a stop in front of the secure door and blew a heavy sigh before peering through the small circle of glass that allowed a window into the room beyond.

It seemed that when his food had been delivered, also heavily guarded, he'd been moved to sit at the table in the corner to eat, instead being chained to the chair for more comfort. From what she could see, the food had been left uneaten and Barnes was sat with his back against the glass wall, the chair still chained to his wrists but on its side next to him as he'd presumably tried to use it to break the walls down before giving up when he realised it wasn't possible. He was staring straight ahead at the door and, unintentionally, she met his hard gaze before hastily looking away, the pain and anger in them only tearing her heart more.

He'd seen her - there was no doubt about that - but he didn't appear to have reacted with any sort of emotion since, when she dared to look back through the door, he was still sat in the same position but was now staring at the floor in front of him rather than the door. She didn't know what she'd expected, whether she thought he'd try to get out again or what, but it seemed he was either too tired or too overwhelmed to continue trying.

Attempting to steady her racing pulse, Cara abandoned her ridiculous tries to get a better look at her patient and decided to make good on her previous plan to go to bed though her mind was still filled with thoughts of the soldier, constantly questioning his behaviour and trying to decrypt his actions. Blocking them out the best she could, she very nearly ran straight to her room, almost forgetting to breathe until she closed the door as if attempting to trap the thoughts outside in the corridor.

But her thoughts slipped through the keyhole and tormented her sleep throughout the night...

\---------------

Date: April 16th 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Corridor - 3rd floor  
Time: 09:13

Day 2 (First day of treatment)

By the time Fury came knocking on her door the next morning, Cara had showered and dressed, downing two cups of coffee to keep her awake before she opened it and came face to face with the director. Despite how early it was, he somehow looked just as awake as he had been the day before, baffling her since she couldn't understand how he ever had time to sleep.

"Nielsen. I trust you slept well?" There was an undertone to his voice which said he definitely knew she hadn't.

"As well as I possibly could, Sir," she lied in response, finishing her sentence abruptly with a yawn, "I was just about to head to my office when you arrived..."

"There's no need," he gestured with a nod for her to follow him. Stepping out into the corridor, she locked the door behind her and walked alongside him, "Coulson and I figured we'd brief you with an audience, let Sergeant Barnes see that you're both trained and fully capable of handling him..." He stopped directly in front of the door leading to Barnes' cell, looking through as she had done only hours previous, "He should have woken up by now."

Cara was tempted to point out that the soldier probably hadn't slept a wink all night if he'd remained in the same state she'd seen him in, but she figured telling Fury she'd looked in on him against his orders wouldn't be the best idea if she wanted to keep this job. Instead, she just kept quiet as he typed in the pass code she'd been given the day before and pushed the door open, revealing the large, tank-like cell in the centre of the room, surrounded by a plethora of consoles and panels manned by other agents.

Along the wall next to the door, an array of chairs - no greater than five or so - sat for the purpose of her own comfort, presumably while she watched her patient from afar. Agent Coulson, looking just as alert as Fury, was perched on the arm of a blue one while a younger-looking blonde agent took up the seat beside it.

They both turned at the new arrivals, the girl smiling whereas Coulson simply nodded in his usual professional manner, "Nielsen, good to hear you decided to take the job. You know why we're here, of course..."

He trailed off, looking over at the cell and prompting Cara to instinctively follow his gaze until it landed on the dark figure whose piercing eyes had intercepted her dreams all night. Sergeant Barnes had been moved from the floor and was now sat on the edge of the wrought iron bed at the other side, furthest from where they were currently standing. He was still chained down but his gaze was focused on the cuffs that bound both his flesh wrist and his metal one together to the headrail, scanning them but making no attempt to free himself or even try pulling them apart.

"Sergeant Barnes hasn't spoken a word since nine pm yesterday evening and we haven't heard so much as a yell from him in that time," Coulson continued, tearing her gaze away from the soldier and back to him, "Many of the staff would call that a relief, but it concerns us as you probably already realise. We sent in a group of guards earlier to move him to the bed and he was compliant - completely off-balancing all we witnessed yesterday-"

"We're hoping you might be able to figure out why," Fury cut his colleague off, getting straight to the point rather than dancing around it and hoping she'd catch on, "If this is part of some plan, we need to know now."

"I'll have to talk to him first. I doubt he'll disclose anything if he doesn't trust me," she pointed out, glancing back at the unresponsive Sergeant again who still hadn't moved.

"If he says anything about HYDRA, report to us immediately," Coulson continued before looking towards the blonde who hadn't been introduced, "This here is Agent Batty. She will remain here throughout the day specifically for your safety. If anything happens inside the cell and you can't get out, she will be the one to get you out and call security."

Agent Batty got to her feet and held out a hand which Cara kindly took, shaking it lightly, "Pleasure to meet you, Agent Nielsen."

"Same to you, Agent Batty," she replied, slightly more relieved to know she at least had back-up. Though Batty was small and slender, she had an athletic air to her and held herself in a stance that breathed strength and confidence beyond her less-than-grand stature. She was a fighter for sure, though someone without Cara's psychiatric knowledge would see her as harmless, a weakling - the perfect disguise.

"Good," she turned to find Fury holding a sort of belt, a holster hanging from it containing nine needles she recognised as the one's Bruce had shown her in the lab, "These are just a precaution, of course, but it's good for you to have some self-defence in addition to Agent Batty."

He handed it over and as she secured it around her hips, the Director and Coulson headed towards the door. "We'll leave you to it, Nielsen," Coulson said, his palm grasped around the door handle but his upper body turned back to face her, "I trust you'll do S.H.I.E.L.D. proud..."

They swiftly left seconds later without another sound, the door clicking firmly closed behind them and leaving just Cara, Agent Batty and Sergeant Barnes - who had only looked up once as the door shut before glaring back down at his hands - in the almost empty room. Cara trialled the accessibility of the syringes for a moment, running the pads of her fingers over the selection and pulling one of each colour out in turn, ensuring the blue were closest and the red furthest away as she hoped never to have a reason to knock Barnes unconscious. That would be an immediate step in the wrong direction.

"I'm ready whenever you want to head in," Agent Batty spoke up, her voice sounding far away as it pulled her out of her thoughts. Cara nodded, taking a step towards the cell door but an arm met her abdomen and blocked her way before her foot even met the floor, "Sorry, but I need to take your phone and your earpiece - Fury's orders... Barnes can't be allowed to get his hands on anything which could access the S.H.I.E.L.D. database..."

Cara gave her an odd look, "It's all password encrypted, though... surely there's no worry? And I would never let him get anywhere near them..."

"It's just... in case he overpowers you... You're not trained in combat," she tried to explain, avoiding Cara's gaze, "He might-"

"He might take them from me by force?" Cara finished bluntly for her with barely any emotion in her voice as she was talking to herself just as much as Agent Batty, "He might kill me before you can stop him? I'm right, aren't I?" She knew she was - of course S.H.I.E.L.D. wouldn't want their precious data in the line of fire. Putting agents in danger was fine, but the information wasn't disposable in the same way that she was. They could get another therapist, they couldn't get a new database.

A lump formed in Cara's throat as she suddenly brought herself face-to-face with the harsh truth she'd avoided dwelling on up until now. If something went wrong in there and she couldn't get out... that was it. End of the road for Cara Nielsen...

"Yes," Batty said plainly, taking the two devices out of Cara's hands as she passed them over, "but again, it's just a precaution. If your situation is compromised, I will do all I can to get you out."

"Unless there comes a situation where you can't," Cara's voice was flat and monotonous as she stood in front of the cell door, seeing Barnes look up in her peripheral vision while she started to type in the pass code, "I've worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. long enough to know at what point they refuse to intervene. Better one fatality than two..."

"So have I..." she heard the other Agent say behind her as the first door opened, allowing her to step into the entrance chamber needed to pass through to get to the cell, the purpose of which was to prevent the captive getting out. Unfortunately, it also put one more obstacle between her and Batty if something did go wrong. It was protection for everyone but her.

Then, as that door closed and the second one began to open, she could have sworn she heard Batty say, "But I don't necessarily agree with everything S.H.I.E.L.D. says..."

\-----------------

Date: April 16th 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Secure Cell - Interior  
Time: 09:49

Strangely, the feeling of S.H.I.E.L.D. not particularly valuing her life or caring what happened to her inside the cell made her hold her head a little higher as she walked in, the second door closing and sealing itself behind her with a small hiss. She could feel Sergeant Barnes' glare follow her closely as she crossed the room to pick up the chair from beside the desk, his eyes seeming to bore into the side of her head. Although, when she turned around and placed the chair in front of him, he seemed to have no interest in her presence and had looked back down at his shackles.

Standing beside the chair, she watched him for a moment, seeing him up close for the first time now and taking her time to fully assess what she was dealing with. As she tilted her head down at him in curiosity, her gaze trailing over his tensed features, he suddenly looked back at her and she couldn't help flinching at the coldness in his eyes. Something flickered behind them when he saw her fear, but it was miniscule and had passed in under a second so she couldn't identify it.

"Sergeant Barnes," she started cautiously, sitting down across from him and folding her hands in her lap, her pinky finger brushing against the first blue needle strapped beside her leg, "I understand you're confused. My name is Cara Nielsen. I'm here to help you..."

She paused for a moment in the hopes he might reply or she might catch that earlier flicker again, but she was only met by a blank, emotionless stare. "Do you have anything you'd like to ask? Anything you'd like to tell me?" she tried, still receiving silence, "Sergeant Barnes?"

Still nothing.

Cara breathed out a sigh, her eyes glancing around the room as she tried to come up with something he might respond to. For a moment, she consider calling him 'Bucky', testing if the nickname brought any memories to light, but then she recalled what Fury had told her before. If he had been recaptured by Hydra and the name was now some sort of trigger, she'd only have about a second to knock him out or run to the door. Neither sounded possible.

"Sergeant Barnes, I'm going to be your therapist for the foreseeable future... I'm going to come here and talk to you every day and monitor-"

"Where is here?" His gravely and low voice startled her as he suddenly spoke through her own words, his gaze still fixed on hers, seemingly less cold and more confused at the calmness of her voice. Like a lost child trying to find its way home...

He continued to stare at her, unblinking, until she realised he obviously wanted an answer, "Y-you're in the headquarters of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. At first you were in a holding cell until we sedated you and now you're in an observation cell..."

His eyes fell back to his hands for a few seconds before he looked up at her again, limp strands of hair covering his forehead and casting his face into uneven shadows, "S.H.I.E.L.D...?" The was a tone of recognition in his voice, hinting he remembered something about the name, "How...? How did I get here?"

The more she saw of him up close, the more Cara was convinced her theory that he was a broken man hiding behind the image of a tougher one was correct. His walls and defences were down for the few, short moments that passed as he tried to piece together what was going on. "You were brought here a night ago..." she'd been specifically told to tread carefully around the subject of Hydra for now, at least until they found out specifically what the organisation had done to him, "One of our agents brought you in..."

He brought his hands up and Cara tensed for a moment before she was sure he was only using them to brush his hair back from his eyes. His metal arm, visible from half-way down his bicep to his hand due to the short sleeves of his S.H.I.E.L.D-issued t-shirt (his original clothing had been removed due to the sheer quantity of weapons concealed in his jacket alone), glinted in the strong lights in the ceiling, causing her eyes to be drawn to it until he lowered it back to his lap once more.

"...Why?" The troubled question hung in the air above their heads, echoing in the silence between them as he blinked, possibly trying to clear his thoughts but seemingly finding it difficult. He glared at his hands momentarily before snapping his head up suddenly, his gaze boring into her, demanding an answer, "Why was I brought here?"

Cara's pulse sped up at the abrupt switch in the volume of his voice, but she kept her voice steady as she tentatively replied with the most careful reason she could think of, "You weren't safe where you were... Our agent believed we could keep you safe and help you recover..."

His eyes narrowed at her response, disbelief and distrust swimming around in his contracted pupils before he asked the one question she was hoping they wouldn't get to...

"Recover from what...?" There was an edge to his voice, as though he knew he'd touched on something he wasn't supposed to, his head tilting slightly as he waited for an answer she was forbidden to give.

"You've been through a lot," she improvised, knowing it wasn't what he wanted to hear but it also wasn't a lie, "Here, we are going to keep an eye on you... we can ensure you're safe..."

"Why wasn't I safe where I was?" he pushed as she saw his metal hand moving rhythmically out of the corner of her eye, tapping against his thigh in a similar manner to Clint when he was restless.

Cara was beginning to panic by this point, realising he wasn't going to drop the subject without a straight answer. Behind him, outside the cell, she could see Agent Batty watching on; the temptation to shoot her a desperate look was almost overwhelming, but Sergeant Barnes would no doubt see the action and she had no idea how he would react. It wasn't worth the risk.

"I don't know," she lied carefully, looking back at him with sincerity in her tone which was hopefully mirrored in her gaze. She moved her hand closer to the syringes just in case, "I haven't been fully briefed on your case yet. I only know what I've been told-"

A flash of silver flared suddenly at the edge of her peripheral vision, accompanied by a clink of chains as a solid force wrapped itself around her wrist. Cold pressure chilled  her skin, her blood feeling like ice. She let out an involuntary yelp, her breath hitching in her throat as she looked down, wide-eyed, at the soldier's hand grasped around her arm, the feeling in her fingers fading as the blood supply was steadily cut off by his strength, "Sergeant-"

"You're lying." His tone was calm, but there was malice hidden behind it as he brought her hand up to eye-level within his grasp, his teeth gritted and his eyes wild with clueless anger - as though he was furious but didn't quite know why.

"No..." she reasoned, gasping in pain as his grip tightened further, causing her entire hand to go numb, "I'm not... I-"

"So if I put your hand down, you're not going to stab me with a needle? I saw you," he argued, his temper getting more heated but his chilled tone making Cara's blood run cold, "I'm not blind..."

"I... I know you're not... it's just a precaution..." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Agent Batty still watching them closely, her eyes silently asking if it was time to intervene. Cara swiftly shook her head in the younger agent's direction as she felt Barnes' grip loosen ever so slightly, "I can't tell you the truth, okay? Maybe during a later session we can talk about what you remember, but not now. It's too dangerous..."

Her tone was sharp and quick but still somewhat soft as she discovered her confidence again, figuring that shrinking away and acting cowardly would only make his mental state worse, adding a God-complex to the extensive list of issues he already had. Something else in his expression also hinted that he didn't truly want to hurt her and, seconds later, she was proved right as he released her wrist and let it drop back to her lap, his cuffs clanking against each other as he retracted his arm, "You mean I'm dangerous...?"

His voice was smaller now, his eyes briefly softening as they focused in on the bruises already forming across the skin of her wrist, creating a purple and blue mishmash of colour against her darker skin, "I hurt you...? I didn't mean to hurt you..."

"Okay, Sergeant..." she replied as calmly as possible, resisting the urge to cradle her injured wrist with her other hand as the muscle screamed in pain but she didn't want to break eye contact with him, "No, I don't mean that you're dangerous. It's just best if we keep away from certain subjects..."

Sergeant Barnes lapsed back into silence once again, his head down and his brow furrowed beneath the mass of his fringe as it fell across his face. His breathing was steady and she watched him closely, seeing his fists tightly clench and then unclench against the fabric of his pants as though he was trying to calm his own temper without any help. After a minute of the continuous action, he spoke, tense and low, "Subjects like Hydra...?"

He looked up swiftly as her breath caught audibly in her throat, his eyes scanning her face, "Did you think I couldn't remember them? How... how the hell could I forget them...?

Cara tensed at this sudden, unwanted turn, "You do remember?" If he reacted to the memory, she wasn't sure she could more out of the line of fire fast enough. As he stared back at the floor, she took the opportunity to stand up and step back slightly, earning a confused look when he glanced her way, "I would advise you not to dwell on them just now... you're not stable-"

"You want me to forget what they did to me..." he stared at her in confusion, his head tilted slightly but a sharp look returning in his eyes, "You want me to forget... You want to wipe me...?"

"No," she replied hastily, retreating back towards the door as the conversation started to angle south, "We don't want to wipe you, Sergeant. I know they did that, but S.H.I.E.L.D. wants to help you..."

But he wasn't listening, the clanking of the chains shackling him down filling the room as he began to fight against them, trying to stand but being forced back down by the metal restraints, "That's exactly what they said... They wanted to help me. They didn't help... they never did. How can I trust you when your words are just like theirs? How do I know you're not one of them...?"

"I'm a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, Sergeant. I understand your confusion," Cara was only a few feet from the door now and she knew he knew she was trying to escape as his gaze flickered between her and said door behind her, "but I promise I am here to help you. I want to help you recover from what they did to you..."

"I was okay on my own!" he cried in response, continuing to fight and glare at the chains which bound him, "I was fine before I came here... I was okay...! You ruined my life again, you ruined everything!" 

The man she'd been talking to only seconds before was gone in less than half that time, replaced by a yelling wreck, his hair covering his sweat-soaked face as he thrashed against the cuffs holding him back from attacking her. She reached the door within seconds, Agent Batty looking frantic on the other side as she pulled it open and barrelled into the middle chamber, spluttering meaningless words as she closed the door which separated her from the Sergeant.

Once outside, she threw her body into one of the chairs, breathing hard. Staring back into the cell where her patient was now almost spasming with rage against his bonds, tears flooded her view - tears of anger more than tears of pain. She watched on as he broke free with his metal arm first, using it to pull the other arm out of its chains before yelling as he picked up the chair she'd only just been sat on and launched it towards the glass separating them. She flinched as it struck, making no noise or mark, but shaking her deep down as she realised she'd got out just in time...

If she'd been a second too late, it wouldn't have been a chair that collided with the glass. It would have been her...


	5. draft

Date: April 16th 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Secure Cell - Exterior  
Time: 10:22

While Agent Batty called in security, helping them restrain and sedate Sergeant Barnes, Cara was still sat in the corner, her head in her hands with shock but also guilt. She should have known not to continue with such a triggering subject; should have known pursuing anything to do with HYDRA was a recipe for disaster. Then again, it wasn't Hydra that caused that particular outburst, it was S.H.I.EL.D..

Perhaps Barnes was right. Perhaps he shouldn't have been brought here and Steve should have left him to recover on his own terms. She could only imagine how it felt for him to have recovered so much by himself, only to be set right back at square one after being captured by S.H.I.E.L.D.. He'd gone two years without trauma and now they'd brought it all flooding back...

By the time he was finally knocked out and chained back down to the bed inside the cell, she'd pretty much convinced herself that the outburst could have been avoided if only she'd been more careful. He just wanted his life back, and S.H.I.E.L.D. was bringing back memories of what had taken it from him in the first place.

"Are you alright? That was a pretty lucky escape you had there..." Cara looked up, blurry-eyed, to see Agent Batty standing beside her, her sleeves rolled up to the elbow and a sheen of sweat coating her forehead after helping tackle Barnes back into his shackles.

Cara hummed, not really trusting herself to provide acceptable or sane words. The other agent seemed to understand, though, as she walked away after a few seconds, leaving her alone in the corner in favour of talking to one of the guards whom she could probably get a better conversation out of. Cara was too annoyed with herself to speak.

The earpiece that had been discarded on the table beside her abruptly started bleeping away to itself, muffled slightly by the wood but loud enough for her to hear as it pulled her back to the land of the living. Wiping her eyes on the back of her sleeve, the distraught tears soaking into the fabric, she leaned across and gathered it in her hand along with the phone beside it. After pocketing the latter, she fixed the beeping mechanism over her ear and pressed the button to answer.

"Nielsen? We saw what happened on the security cameras," Coulson's voice exploded in her ear, barely any concern actually seeping through his 'professionalism', "Is Barnes stable? Is he alright?"

She was momentarily tempted to shoot back with sarcasm - say thanks for asking how she was or something along the same wavelength - but she knew arguing or talking back to her superior would only make her current situation ten times worse so her confidence buckled, "He's been sedated... things just got out of hand..."

"We know. We saw. We specifically told you not to talk about Hydra, Nielsen, you deliberately disobeyed our orders-"

"I didn't, Sir," she dared to cut him off before he continued blaming her. She'd already blamed herself enough without somebody voicing her thoughts, "He led himself to the subject without any encouragement on my part. I don't think it's very surprising that Hydra is the one of the main thoughts in his mind, especially after being captured and chained down. He no doubt associates anything of that sort with them if the rumours of brainwashing are true..."

Coulson breathed an exasperated sigh at the other end. "We're trusting you with this case, Nielsen," he warned, thankfully choosing to ignore the fact she'd interrupted him, "If this happens again, you must use the needles you were given. I can't understand why you didn't just immobilise him..."

"I didn't think, Sir. I'm sorry," she apologised quietly, looking straight ahead at the unconscious form of James Barnes, unmoving inside the cell, "I'll make sure I use them if it happens again..." 

A voice in the back of her mind said she definitely wouldn't. He was a human being despite everything else, not some savage creature that needed tranquillising. If he needed to be calmed, she would use reason - not drugs.

"Good..." he sounded slightly annoyed but, without seeing him face to face, Cara couldn't be sure, "We're permitting you a two hour break until he comes round. Use it. Captain Rogers has the next week off duty so I suspect he'll want to see you. I believe he's in the control room on the forty-ninth floor..."

"Thank you, Sir..."

"You'll be collected when Barnes regains consciousness, then we'll go again, hopefully with less chair throwing this time..." The last part she guessed was Agent Coulson's attempt at being funny so she laughed woodenly before hanging up, puffing out a sigh and rolling her eyes. Coulson was hard to work with at the best of times since he did everything strictly by the book - she usually found it was easier to just nod than confront him in an unwinnable argument.

Wiping her tear-drenched palms on the upper material of her pants and wincing at the pressure on her wrist, she got to her feet, the chair screeching against the floor. Agent Batty glanced over as she headed to the door, nodding discreetly before going back to her previous discussion with one of the more burly guards whom Cara had watched pin Sergeant Barnes to the ground while the thinner of the three stuck a syringe in his arm. The sight of the red liquid decreasing as it flowed into the man's blood, releasing all the tension from his muscles until he went completely limp and lifeless, was still stained in her mind.

He was in that same state now, sleeping the anger off in chains like a wild animal locked in a cage rather than the human he truly was. It tore her apart - the guilt; the knowledge that she'd probably lost all the trust she'd managed to build between them in that short conversation... Trying to regain that would be as much of a struggle as pushing a boulder up a hill. He'd convinced himself that she was the enemy now and there was no chance changing his view would be easy.

With one last look at the unconscious figure in the cell, she slipped out of the door and away from the intense trauma that lay inside. The lock buzzed behind her and she breathed in the slightly less tense air in the corridor outside before straightening up and heading upstairs to find Steve...

\---------------

Date: April 16th 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Control Room - 49th floor  
Time: 10:40

Coulson was at least right about one thing - a rare and strange phenomenon which only happened once in a blue moon. As Cara entered the control room, she found the Captain pacing along the walkway, overlooking the bustling mass of monitors and agents below. She cleared her throat and his eyes swept up from the floor to meet hers, a happier and relieved shine breaking through the heavy clouds of worry in his eyes.

"Cara, thank God..." he reached her in seconds, his vast arms enveloping her in an abrupt hug, cradling her smaller body against his chest, "I should have been there... I saw it all happen on the monitors..." His voice was controlled but there was a frantic edge to it as he rested his chin atop her head and held her tightly, his arms creating an inescapable vice around her.

"I'm okay, Steve..." she breathed reassuringly against his warm t-shirt, wrapping her own arms around his chest and trying her best to look up at him, "I'm okay..."

"I should have been in there with you. You should never have gone in alone," he insisted, pulling back slowly and holding her shoulders as his eyes scanned her for any injuries. It wasn't long before she saw his eyes zeroing in on the bruises littering her wrist and his face fell, "You're hurt... oh God, he hurt you-"

"Steve, it's fine... I'm fine... Bucky didn't know he was hurting me..." She hissed quietly through her teeth as he lifted her hand in his two larger ones, shooting her an apologetic look as he examined the tender skin.

"I shouldn't have let you go in so soon... I should have said something to Fury," he muttered, cursing himself like it was his fault she agreed to be Barnes' therapist. True, it had partly been because of him, but she'd known the risks when she accepted and her ultimate decision had been for Bucky's sake, not Steve's.

"He only bruised my wrist, Steve. It's nothing really, I expected a lot worse..." She was trying her best to stop the Captain blaming himself for something he had no part in, but he wasn't having it as he looked up, wide-eyed, his gaze laced with concern.

"He threw a chair at you, Cara! How is that nothing?"

"He threw a chair at the wall," she pointed out as he shook his head firmly.

"The wall you were on the other side of! He was aiming at you!" A few heads turned as his voice rose, their discussion drawing attention from the agents underneath them who were just trying to get their work done. Steve sent an apologetic glance down at them before looking back to her, his tone pained and hushed, "I can't, Croft... I can't let you back in there..."

Cara couldn't help but smile at the nickname he'd started calling her a few days after they met. She'd tried insisting he stay professional, but he didn't listen and she couldn't deny it was cool to be compared to Lara Croft. Steve had noticed the similarity in names when Natasha had introduced him to her favourite game, Tomb Raider, but she wasn't going to let it soften her decision.

"Then, it's lucky for you that it's not your choice to make," she replied, realising as soon as the words left her mouth and Steve's expression fell that her tone had been a lot harsher than she'd intended. Backtracking slightly, she started again, softer, "Bucky's still holding on, Steve... I saw it in his eyes when he was asking me questions..."

"I just don't want you getting seriously injured just because I want Bucky back... I feel selfish for even asking you to do this..." The troubled look in his eyes spilled rapidly into his voice as he turned his gaze to the floor, gently dropping her wrist to her side. She instinctively cradled it to avoid any more pain, clutching it to her chest and angling her head to meet Steve's eyes, blocking his view of the floor and making him look at her.

Seeing how downhearted he was by his guilt, she reached up and placed her good hand on his shoulder, "I'll get him back, I promise. Bucky is still fighting, but Hydra has confused him into fighting the wrong people... He thought we were them. His paranoia isn't surprising after being their puppet for over half a century - he's scared they're going to catch him and put him through it all again..."

"I know, but... he still hurt you, though... How do you know he won't do it again?" Steve's eyes flickered to her wrist again before going back to her face, "You can't be sure he won't..."

"I'm not. Look... If you're that worried about me, I'll convince Batty to let you stand outside and watch. Who knows, maybe seeing your face will trigger something good in his mind?" she offered, seeing uncertainty in his expression, "If something happens, I'll have these-" she patted the needles tethered to her waist, "and you watching out for me. There's no way he could hurt me, then... right?"

"Yeah... I think I could live with that," Steve agreed, nodding but still looking fixedly down at her wrist, "Please let me take you to a medic, Croft... Banner, even? Just let someone take a look at that..."

Cara looked down at her forearm and found herself slightly agreeing with him. The bruises did look quite serious, she'd just been running on so much adrenaline after running out of the cell that she hadn't really stopped to think about her injury. "Okay... I think seeing Bruce would be best. I don't know who around here knows about Bucky and who doesn't..."

"Come on, then," he took her uninjured arm in his hand and rotated her towards the door, pulling gently in the direction of the stairs, "He'll be in the lab. God help us the day he's not, then we really have to worry..."

She laughed lightly as he smirked, falling into step with him effortlessly even though he was much taller, "I think nothing short of the end of the world would convince Bruce to leave his experiments... Even then, I'm not sure he'd come willingly..."

Steve chuckled, the worry in his eyes fading away slightly to make room for amusement, but the concern still lingered at the edges. Seeing a man who was usually so uplifted and happy with something as small as one soldier troubling him told her that she was right to carry on trying to treat Sergeant Barnes - if only to eradicate that worry and replace it with hope.

\--------------

Date: April 16th 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Dr. Banner's Laboratory   
Time: 11:01

Bruce, though concerned by the sight of her injury, swiftly managed to strap it up with a cold compress, leaving her hand numb from the icy temperature. The bruising hadn't improved, but he assured the frantic Captain that it wasn't as bad as it looked. Nothing was broken, nothing was sprained - he just had to hold back the urge to say 'I told you so' after they explained what originally caused the injury.

Fury contacted her on their way up to the lab, basically repeating what Coulson had already said but with a smidgen more compassion as he actually made sure to ask if she was okay. He also ensured she was definitely up for going back in when Sergeant Barnes came round - a question that had seemingly slipped his colleagues mind.

"How's that feeling?" Bruce questioned, applying a final bandage and peering up at her as she sat on the stool in front of him. His work, which they'd torn him from, was still spread across the worktop beside her so she was careful not to move even a single paper, though the sheer number of scientific-looking scrawls on them bewildered her.

"Cold," she replied honestly, making Steve chuckle behind her. He'd been there the entire time, insisting any time she asked that he didn't have anywhere more interesting to be. 

Bruce straightened up and raised an eyebrow at the Captain as she, too, swivelled to look at him, "Are you sure you don't have somewhere to be? Or has it slipped your mind that you're Captain America?"

Steve grinned, reaching a hand up and running it though his hair sheepishly, "Fury gave me a week off duties so I've taken it upon myself to accompany Cara wherever she goes."

"Well, not wherever I go... That would be really weird," Cara pointed out, eliciting a small, rare smile on Bruce's face, "Only where I agree you can accompany me."

Steve's face went slightly red as he realised how his words could have been misinterpreted, and he rushed to rectify it, "O-of course... That's what I meant-" 

His panicking was cut off abruptly as her earpiece began bleeping in her ear, the shrill sound audible enough for him to hear as he stopped mid-apology. Sighing, she held up a finger, silently telling him to hold that thought before answering the incoming call.

'Hello?' had barely passed her lips before Fury cut her off, his voice calmly urgent, "Nielsen, I'm going to have to pull you away from your precious downtime unfortunately. I just got an alert to say Barnes is starting to wake up. I know you've only had a short break-"

"It's okay, Sir, I understand..." When she'd left she figured she wouldn't get the full two hours Couldn't had offered, but there had still been a little bit of faith in her, hoping for a little longer. Now, it seemed her faith had been placed in a lost cause. Sergeant Barnes wasn't going to play by the rules so why should she place bets? Nothing was certain in this anymore.

"Again, I'm sorry. If we're not persistent with his therapy, he might slip from our grasp..." he reasoned, though there was no need to. She already knew the reality of the situation - even if she hadn't been able to make any progress just yet, she was determined she would.

"I know, Sir. I'll head down there now..."

"Good luck," Fury replied sincerely, "You were doing well before, just try to keep the conversation away from Hydra-related subjects..."

"I'll try my best, Sir." She hung up without saying goodbye, knowing Fury wasn't really one for formalities of any kind as she looked back up at Steve who had obviously been trying to work out what was being said on the other end from her responses. "Barnes is waking up. I'm going to head down there so if you're coming, decide quickly..." she clarified, already guessing his answer by the way his face turned stony and determined as she spoke.

A swift nod proved her right, "'Course I'm coming. What kind of guy would I be to let you go in there again without back-up?"

"Always the gentleman..." she sighed, slightly melodramatically, giving him a weak smile as her mind was filled with the prospect of facing Sergeant Barnes again after the way he'd turned before. She looked to Bruce who smiled understandingly, "See you later, Bruce..."

"Hopefully with no more bruises," he replied as Steve headed towards the door, turning on his heel half-way and looking back at the doctor with the same stony gaze.

"I won't let her get any more. He gets too close, I'll be in there pulling her out myself..." 

The scary thing was, there was something in the Captain's voice that told her he was deadly serious...

\--------------

Date: April 16th 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Secure Cell - Exterior  
Time: 11:13

And so, here she was again, standing in front of the door to the glass cell, staring ahead at the form of Sergeant Barnes sitting, once again, upright on the bed, his wrists chained to the frame. After seeing the bandages on Cara's own wrist, Agent Batty had assured her the cuffs had been retracted further, making it impossible for his hands to move or even get close to grabbing her - a fact that relieved Steve but troubled Cara.

Barnes hadn't intended to hurt her. He'd even apologised, yet now he was being treated worse because of it. She would never gain his trust if S.H.I.E.L.D. kept lodging spanners like this in the works...

"I'm still staying here," Steve said assertively, standing his ground as Cara lifted her shoulders in a shrug.

"I didn't think you'd be going anywhere, to be honest..." He folded his arms across his chest and nodded in response, reluctantly obeying Batty as she motioned for him to stand aside, out of Barnes' eye line. "I'll be fine, Steve..."

"The more you say that, the less I believe it," he replied, watching her closely from a distance while she typed in the security code and the door whirred to life before sliding open. Agent Batty said something back to him, but her voice was cut off as the door hissed closed again, sealing her into the chamber for a few seconds before the second door opened took with it the last barrier between herself and Sergeant Barnes.

He was already glaring at her as she met his gaze, the anger simmering behind his pupils along with a drop of apprehension, his arms tugging with a loud, definitive clunk against the chains that bound them. Keeping calm, she stepped across the cell and perched on the edge of the same chair he'd thrown at her - the chair that was now nailed to the ground around five feet from where he was chained to prevent the same thing happening again.

She made sure to keep a hand firmly across the pack of needles as his eyes scanned over her, letting him know she was armed and how this time he couldn't stop her using them, "Sergeant Barnes... I think our last session ended badly... Are you prepared to try again?"

His steely gaze remained just as solid and cold through the stray bangs that fell across his face, fists clenched tightly within the cuffs that confined them. There was something in his unblinking, unflinching stare that was almost daring her to sedate him again, egging her on from somewhere in the depths of his eyes. He didn't give an answer.

Breathing out sharply through her nose in a mix of relief and despondence, she refused to give up, "How about we start with the basics? Would you be able to give me your full name and rank, please?"

He still didn't blink, keeping his gaze firmly on hers as he forced out a reply through gritted teeth, "James Buchanan Barnes. Sergeant. One-hundred-and-seventh Infantry Regiment."

"Good..." At least, it seemed, he could remember some things even if Hydra had erased the important stuff, such as his involvement with the 'Howling Commandos' Steve had spoken so highly of. She suspected it was too closely-related to S.H.I.E.L.D. for them to allow the memory to stay, "Where did you grow up, James?"

As she spoke, his eyes flickered to look at something behind her for a moment, confusion flooding them before he looked back to her and tried to regain his composure, though he was clearly distracted by whatever he'd seen. The hardness of his gaze was worn at the edges by uncertainty. She tried again, "James? Where did you grow up...?"

"...Brooklyn," he said slowly, the distracted tone confirming her thoughts before he suddenly stared straight at the culprit of his confusion, nodding his head slightly towards it, "T-that man... who is he?"

Cara turned her head to follow his gaze and saw only Steve standing at the edge of the room, his back against the wall and his eyes trained on Agent Batty's face as she was talking to him. She faltered for a moment, wracking her brains for a sensible way to answer this without provoking a reaction similar to when Steve was his mission, "He's the agent I told you about before. The one who brought you here..."

Sergeant Barnes' gaze remained on Steve for a few moments, speaking to her while staring at him, "He works for S.H.I.E.L.D.? He brought me to this place?" The tension he'd bore previously was gone, replaced with pure curiosity - almost as if he was trying to figure everything out.

She nodded her head though he wasn't looking at her, "Yes. He has been looking for you for quite a while, trying to bring you in. To help you recover..." She knew she was treading on eggshells by this point, but this was progress if he recognised Steve. It showed they were getting somewhere and she was determined to make him see he was safe with S.H.I.E.L.D...

He snapped his head to face her and she was scared for a moment before she saw the calm confusion in his eyes rather than the anger and fury she'd feared would be there, "Are you lying to me...? I-I can't tell anymore..."

"I'm telling the truth. That man out there has saved thousands of people's lives over the years. He wants to save you, too," she nodded, glancing back to Steve who was now looking straight back at her. He smiled reassuringly, slightly bewildered by the fact he was being stared at by two people before he caught Barnes' gaze. The Sergeant's eyes widened and he turned back to Cara with an unintelligible expression masking his face, "You look troubled... What is it?"

He looked down at his metal hand, stretching it out as much as the chains would allow before sighing and pursing his lips in thought, his forehead crinkling towards the centre, "I know him..." He tilted his head to the right, as though asking for clarification, "...Do I know him?"

He remembered. Cara's heart lifted at the turn of events - if he could remember Steve's face, it was a sign they were heading in the right direction. Still, she knew she had to edge cautiously around certain subjects, "You used to... I believe you encountered him a few years ago and then-" She cut herself off before she overstepped the trigger line, "What exactly do you remember of the war, Sergeant?"

Her voice brought his attention back to her, his face a lot more youthful when there wasn't anger in his eyes, "I was in the Infantry Regiment with..." He trailed off, his eyes widening as he looked up at Steve once again, "That's impossible - he can't have been there... there's no way..."

"Tell me what you remember, Sergeant. No matter how unbelievable it might sound," she urged, leaning forward and resting her forearms on her thighs, her hands clasped and the needles all but forgotten as she hung onto this tiny shred of hope, "This is why we're here - to help rebuild the memories you've lost..."

"How did I forget...?" he muttered, his eyebrows knitted together and the newly-emerging blue of his eyes drowning the hostility, allowing his deeper set confusion to float to the surface, "... There was the 'Howling-'... the 'Howling-'..."

"The 'Howling Commandos'," she finished for him as he stumbled over the name, "You remember them?"

"Vaguely..." His chest rose and fell again beneath the thin t-shirt he'd been given to wear as he breathed heavily, almost like the memories were choking him, "but... how do you know about them? It was a secret operation...?"

"I briefly read your file before taking up this job," she informed him slowly as he blew out a ragged breath, "I know it's a lot to take in all at once, James, so I think that's enough remembering for one day. We've done well here... If we keep at it, you may have regained most of what you lost within a month..."

Not wanting to be in there if the accelerated breathing was signalling another outburst, Cara stood and made her way towards the door, but his rough voice stopped her in her tracks, "And what if I don't want to remember...? Will you let me go?"

Turning to face him but finding his gaze fixated on the floor, she faltered for a second before simply saying, "That's not my decision to make. I'm just here to help you get better, beyond that is out of my control..."

"I tried to kill you as soon as I met you," he eyes flickered up, pointing out the truth of their last encounter but not making any move to replay it, "Do you really trust me not to try again within a month...?" His words were the sort usually accompanied by an angry or sinister tone, but Barnes was the polar opposite, his gaze inquisitive with even a hint of fear lingering at the base.

"No, I don't," she replied bluntly, her nerves calmed by his placidity and current pacifism, "but luckily for you, my job isn't to trust my patients, it's to treat them. And that is what I plan to do regardless of your cooperation, Sergeant..."

Before he could form a reply, she turned on her heel and left the cell, leaving him staring after her with more curiosity than fury this time. It was safe to say they'd gotten somewhere, not very far, mind, but it was a start and with therapy usually the first session was the hardest...

Fingers-crossed, it could only get easier from here on in...


	6. draft

Date: April 16th 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Office - 3rd floor  
Time: 21:47

Cara finished writing up her notes in Sergeant Barnes' file much earlier than she'd anticipated, setting her pen down on her desk and scanning the words she'd scribbled down;

'Sergeant Barnes shows good progress with memories. He can recollect some of his past before Hydra's involvement, such as his membership in the famous 'Howling Commandos', but has yet to link that to his friendship with Captain Rogers, and I have not attempted to bring up the train incident just yet so we are still clueless as to how he survived. Hydra still seems to be a cautious subject and I plan to avoid mentioning them until I'm sure he is ready but, otherwise, he is doing well after one day of treatment.'

Signing the bottom for legality, she slipped the paper back into its binder and placed it on the shelf serving as its home for now. It was ridiculously light due to S.H.I.E.L.D. not really possessing much information on him other than his stints as the 'Winter Soldier' and what Steve could provide. It was almost as though she had to learn his life story before she could even start treating him, but she guessed she couldn't argue - just talking to someone was therapy within itself.

Perhaps James Barnes didn't need drugs to make him better like S.H.I.E.L.D. was trying to persuade her to give him. Hell, from the looks of it, it was drugs that got him into this mess along with whatever else Hydra had done. No, perhaps he just needed someone to listen to him for once... it was worth a try...

\--------------

Date: April 20th 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Secure Cell - Interior  
Time: 11:28

Day 6 (Fifth day of treatment)

Sergeant Barnes didn't cause any more significant trouble for the next three days, remaining composed but slightly edgy during their sessions and making further progress into his past. On the fourth day (his fifth day of treatment and sixth day at S.H.I.E.L.D.), Fury managed to scrounge up photographs of the founding S.H.I.E.L.D. members from way back when Steve and James were starting out with the institute, along with some of his fellow soldiers from both the war days and the Commandos missions. 

They would no doubt be useful, but Cara avoided the pictures of one Margaret Carter and another Howard Stark, considering Steve was very close to one and the other had been assassinated by the very man in front of her. Adverse reactions to either could seriously taint the hazy light Barnes currently held S.H.I.E.L.D. in after she'd managed to convince him they weren't the enemy - she thought it best not to elaborate on who actually held that title...

"Do you recognise these men?" The grainy, black and white images of five members of the 'Howling Commandos' were splayed out on the table before the Sergeant's eyes as he was now cuffed to the chair after proving he could be trusted to move his hands by the third day. Nonetheless, she had still been instructed to stay out of arms reach so, instead of standing beside or behind the chair, she was leaning against the glass wall of the cell, remaining in full view of Steve and Agent Batty outside the opposite wall.

He spent a minute or so scrutinising them, his pure blue eyes looking puzzled at some intervals with bouts of realisation laced in between, "This one." He pulled one of the larger pictures closer to him, tapping the index finger of his right hand against the face it displayed, "We called him Dum Dum... Dum Dum Dugan..."

A ghost of a smile passed over his lips as he looked up at her for clarification, his hair now tucked behind his ears so he could see better. Pleased with his somewhat fond reaction, she nodded, "His real name was Timothy."

"Yeah..." Barnes turned back to the photos, his voice thick with nostalgia and something else she couldn't quite determine, "...He always wore that stupid hat... never took it off, even when he was fighting..."

"Do you remember any of the others? Any of them look familiar?" She took a step forward and crouched down on the opposite side of the table, her forearms resting on the top and the width of it serving as far enough between them for her to be safe, "How about this one?"

She pushed one of the smaller photos, no larger than those needed for a passport, across the tabletop with the tip of her finger. It showed a smiling man, dressed in a smart uniform, a private's chevron insignia emblazoned on his shoulder. Sergeant Barnes looked down at it, studying the happy guy's face carefully.

"Jim...? Yeah... Jim Morita, right?" he questioned after a moment, "Yeah, it is..." His gaze flickered to the others, suddenly lighting up, "And that's Dernier- oh, and Gabe..."

"Can you remember anything about them? Any memories of them?" This was the most uplifted she'd seen him since they'd met just over half a week ago and she might even go so far to say she was more excited than him at the time as his eyes skittered over them again.

"...N-no... just their faces..." he looked across to her again before gesturing vaguely towards his head, "It's all... hazy... sometimes..." He went deathly quiet for a few seconds before his face dropped and his eyes suddenly filled with trepidation, "Are they dead?"

"Yes, we believe so."

"Did..." he gulped, staring down at his titanium fingers before squeezing his eyes shut as though in fear of the answer, "Did I kill them?"

Cara was taken aback by his assumption. For the past few sessions, they hadn't touched on his past with Hydra - mainly because S.H.I.E.L.D. was unsure of how much he could remember and thought it best to start from the innocent-enough beginnings - but she'd expected to be the one to bring it up eventually, not him.

"No," she replied slowly, tilting her head, "as far as our reports show, they all died of old age or illness. If they were still alive now, they'd be well over a hundred... Why do you ask?"

Lifting his head, his eyes blinking open almost at half-speed, he clenched his teeth tightly, "I've been thinking over what I did on the first day here... and what happened when I was with them... I haven't forgotten what I was..."

"I never suggested you had," she said calmly, standing up but remaining on the opposite side of the table. He seemed calm enough, but she'd seen him snap in a single moment so she wasn't taking any chances though she knew she couldn't lie to him - he'd be able to tell, "I've just been instructed to be careful what I talk about. We wanted to start off with something less likely to trigger you, but I can see you're coping..."

"Why?"

"What do you mean?" She raised an eyebrow at him as he looked up, not even a hint of anger in his gaze.

"Why are you even trying to help me recover?" he asked solemnly, resting both his hands on the table in front of him, "I have enough of my memories to know I'm a lost cause..."

"No patient is a lost cause," she answered sharply, staring straight back into his tormented eyes, "I firmly believe we can reverse this and that's all the motivation I need. Yes, you've done terrible things. Yes, your memory and mind have seen far better days. But every person is worth saving and, though you may have a cybernetic arm, that doesn't make you any less of a person, James. That's why..."

"I've killed people... lots of people..." he muttered, half to himself, half to her, his metal index finger tapping feverishly against the wood beneath it. His tone insinuated he thought that was a reason to leave him be, but she possessed greater compassion than that which could be twisted by such petty grounds. No matter how many times he asked, she wasn't giving up.

"The Winter Soldier has killed people. James Buchanan Barnes has only killed monsters. There's a difference." She bit back a sharper comment, keeping her teeth clamped firmly shut to prevent herself provoking his anger with her own. He stared up at her, his eyes clouded, "I'm sorry... I shouldn't snap at you..."

"N-no," he argued, his voice slightly shaky, "I'm fine... I mean, I'm calm enough... but ... what if I'm not James anymore? What if the Winter Soldier is me now?" 

"Then..." she hesitated, "I'm sorry Mr. Soldier, but I'm going to be getting James back. There are some people here who quite liked him..." Her words sounded comical but her meaning was anything but. If he remained stuck in that negative and despondent mindset, she had no way of helping him - it didn't matter how much she believed in him if he couldn't do the same for himself, "And from what I've seen, I think I quite like James, too. You're a good guy, you've just been misled..."

"None of this... none of it feels real..." he admitted, taking his eyes off her for a few moments and glancing around at the cocoon of glass that surrounded them both. Cara looked up, too, meeting Steve's gaze on the outside and sending a small smile his way before James spoke again, "How do I know you're real? How do I know this isn't all some big nightmare?"

"Do your nightmares usually try to help you?" In a split-second decision, she placed her hand on the table, palm-up, her knuckles grazing against the wood, "Feel my hand and tell me it's not real."

"You're not scared of me?" he started to reach his flesh hand towards hers but retracted it quickly, his fingers spasming as though he'd hit an electric force field, "Even after I hurt you?"

She stared him straight in the eye, clearly seeing his confusion and apprehension displayed in his retinas. He was scared he'd do it again. "Not in the slightest," she replied adamantly, surprising herself with her own confidence, but not letting him see that, "I don't scare easy, Sergeant. It's gonna take more than a metal arm and a scowl to stop me coming back here every day."

Reaching out again, his gaze meticulously scanned her entire face, searching for some sign of doubt but finding no such burden as his rough fingertips came into contact with the soft skin of her palm. His breath visibly caught in his throat and he flinched at the touch but didn't retreat, instead slipping his hand further into her grasp until their palms met and his bitten nails skimmed the edge of her wrist. 

He blinked, laboured, as though such a simple action was overwhelming as his flesh met that of another for the first time in quite a lengthy while - this time with no intention of harming the other person, merely because they asked. He gulped, his words lodged in the back of his throat as she tentatively curled her fingertips around the edge of his hand, "It's... strange..."

"Human contact?" she guessed but he shook his head definitively, staring down at their joined hands, her darker skin contrasting against the paleness of his own flesh.

"Partly... but I've touched people before... I grabbed your wrist before," he pointed out, seemingly deep in thought as he refused to tear his gaze away from the sight in front of him, the cooler surface of her skin next to the radiating warmth from his nervously clammy hand, "but I didn't feel this... odd..."

"You've not touched someone you weren't told to kill." This time she wasn't guessing. It was clear to see, from a therapist's point of view, that the years of working as a ragdoll for Hydra to throw around had greatly warped his view on the world, morals and people - it was PTSD on a nuclear scale, causing him to see friends as threats and help as punishment. "You're not used to being human..."

He finally looked up from their hands to her face, breathing out a harrowed breath through his lips before earnestly saying, "Sometimes... I'm not sure I fit that title anymore..." 

\-------------

Date: April 20th 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Corridor - 3rd floor  
Time: 12:23

Cara left the cell not long after that, sensing from the steady decline in the alertness of his responses that the Sergeant was growing weary of talking and interacting, opting to allow him some rest and pick up on the subject of his past in the morning. She was surprised at how quickly he'd calmed down from his earlier anger concerning Hydra and, in her books, that was the best sign of improvement she'd seen so far. It showed a willingness to talk - a quality many of her previous patients (*cough* Stark *cough*) lacked.

Treating James Barnes was starting to map out reasonably simply and that would make both their lives easier - endless Jargon and professionalism would help no one.

She made her way back to her office since it was only midday and she still had to write up the daily report, stopping suddenly in her tracks when she found a figure leaning up against the wall beside the locked door. He turned his head in her direction as she approached, his gaze fixing on her face, "Well... this is nice, isn't it?"

Speak of the devil billionaire...

"Tony, I-" 

"You send me on holiday and when I get back you've disappeared. You couldn't even tell me you were going?" He stepped forward, the dim light of the corridor casting his face into threatening shadows, "I had to be told by Steve that you were gone. Do you know how that feels? Being the last to know you've abandoned us?!"

"I didn't know about Barnes until after you'd left, Tony," she reasoned, knowing it would get her nowhere if Stark had already made up his mind about who did what, "If I'd known, I would've told you..."

"Would you? Would you really?" he asked, folding his arms across his chest, "Or would you have made something up so I didn't cancel the break? You know what, don't even answer that - I know which you would've chosen..."

"I barely had time to think. I'm sorry, Tony, I couldn't say no when Steve asked. Once I saw the state Barnes was in, I needed to help..." Tony's jaw tensed slightly as he leant his left shoulder against the door frame, his eyes hard with disbelief and cold with anger.

"Of course, I almost forgot about your new patient." Sarcasm slid effortlessly into his tone, malice appearing behind his words, "Was this your plan all along? Leave the people who needed you with some uneducated bimbo while you swan off to help some crazy guy who tried to kill us all two years ago... Did you really think no one would argue?"

"You're angry with me. I get it. But, please let me explain before you jump to conclusions," she half-pleaded, tilting her head hopefully and looking towards him in the near darkness of the dimly-lit corridor, "Let's take this into my office, shall we? It wouldn't be good for either of our reputations to cause a scene out here..."

Somewhat reluctantly, he moved aside to let her unlock the door before following her in, the lights flickering on automatically and illuminating his previously shaded face. His gaze burned the back of her head as she walked over to her desk and took a seat behind it but she held her nerve. She gestured for him to sit across from her, but he remained standing, "Don't even try that. Making this feel like a therapy session won't distract me from the situation so don't even try."

"Okay," she sighed, clasping her hands on the desktop in a small opening amongst the metropolis of papers and files piled atop it, "Don't blame me when your legs hurt, then..." He shot her a look that basically told her to stop stalling and she resisted the urge to sign again, "Alright... Sergeant Barnes was brought in the night before you went on your break. I didn't find out until about three hours after you'd left that he was even here. Fury went up to my office and posed the idea of being his therapist to me then. He assured me the rest of you would be well looked after... believe me, I made sure you would all be accounted for before I even considered accepting the job..."

"'Well looked after'? Is that what that woman is supposed to be doing?" Tony raised an eyebrow at her from where he was leaning against the wall, his battered Converse crossed on the carpet and his arms folded.

"Is that what this is about? You hate me because you don't like the person who took my job?" She guessed she shouldn't have expected much more from Tony, especially since he had a reputation for being purposefully stubborn and awkward, but this was reaching new heights...

"You haven't met her," he countered though she had no idea how he knew she hadn't - perhaps it was a lucky guess, "She's a nightmare... She insists we call her 'Doctor Hart', but where she got that qualification from is beyond me. She's about twelve, for God's sake..."

"She's twenty-five," Cara recalled that snippet of information from the file Fury had allowed her to see, "That's only six years younger than me. The only difference is that I was mainly trained here and she went to college full-time so, if anything, she's more qualified than I am..."

He folded his arms across his chest and cocked his head expectantly, "You sure about that? I went to her yesterday afternoon because I had an attack in the control room and do you know what she told me? 'Try to avoid going into the control room if it triggers you.' Is that really a professional stand on it?"

"It's not my place to question how another therapist works, Tony. If you don't like her methods, Fury is the man to see not me. I'm not permitted to offer any of you treatment anymore..." She had to agree the advice was ridiculous but, as she'd pointed out, she didn't have the right to judge her replacement.

"Please, Cara... I'm gonna go insane if I spend one more second with that woman," Tony practically begged, his eyes pleading as he tried to convince her of his 'plight and hardship'. Cara refused to give in to him until she heard his next point and her heart dropped, "In her last session with Pietro, she asked him what he thought about the experiments Hydra did to him twelve times! Twelve! The poor kid was almost in tears when he came out and Clint had to hold Sam back from storming into her office and telling her exactly what he thought... They're all on my side with this..."

Realisation that he wasn't exaggerating hit her like a ten-tonne truck and she felt suddenly terrible as he recounted more and more of this 'Doctor Hart''s faux pas, each one filling her with more guilt. She'd known from the get-go that she shouldn't have let someone else look after her friends, but she'd stupidly ignored her instinct... "Okay, okay, I've heard enough... but what do you propose I do about it? You guys aren't under my care anymore..."

"Just do something, before we all end up in a madhouse... I've tried talking to Coulson but he's preoccupied with Metallica in there as everyone seems to be around here..." He gave her a pointed look and jerked a thumb towards the door as he said it, emphasising his annoyance.

"I can't," she said helplessly, shaking her head but looking up at him with pleading hurt in her eyes, "I'm sure you guys can cope... It's only for another month or so..."

While she spoke, Tony walked over and took a seat across from her despite his refusal to before, staring straight into her eyes as he waited for her to finish. There was a heavy silence between them for a few seconds before he sighed, all the annoyance washed from his expression and replaced with a tinge of despondence, "Cara... she straight-up told Tasha that her issues weren't any of her concern. Straight-up, to her face, told her that she had more important patients to tend to... Tasha wouldn't tell you this so I will - we need you to do something about this or we'll have no choice but to come down here and get treatment from you... That's how desperate we are..."

There was nothing in his gaze that said he was lying - if there was, she'd know straight away because Tony was really bad at bluffing. He was deadly serious this time. 

"I'll see if I can talk to her, okay? There's not much else I can do since I have no part in the Avengers Initiative anymore, but I'll try to talk to her. I promise," Cara tried her best to assure him as he looked back at her with a helplessness she never thought she'd see on Tony Stark's face.

Another silence fell in the distance between them, perhaps even heavier than the previous, before he spoke once more with unfathomable sincerity, "We need you, Nielsen... more than any of us realised before..."

\--------------

Tony left her with a heavy heart, muttering something about going to see Bruce in the lab before excusing himself and leaving her to her own thoughts in the office. She could hardly believe what he'd just told her, hardly understand how the things could be true, but there was no way even Stark could make all that up. How could a therapist do all that to her patients? To the people she was supposed to treat and care for?

Decisively, she abandoned writing up her report and instead began heading up to her old office in the hopes that Doctor Hart was still up there. She was sure to leave her earpiece in her office, knowing full well that if Fury or Coulson saw her on the security cameras they'd get on the line to her immediately and ask for an explanation she didn't want to give. Thus, the mechanism remained on top of Barnes' file until she got back. Technically, she was forbidden to take it off when she was on duty, but she figured her only duty now was with the Sergeant and he seemed to have finally found some sleep as she looked in on him on the way past, meaning she was off-duty until he woke again.

He'd only had five minute dozes for the past few days - Agent Batty's job was to stay with him at all times and every day when Cara asked, she replied with the same news:

"He stared at the door all night."

She'd been trying to figure out the motive behind that behaviour, but had so far found no plausible answer.

If he was waiting for her, why did he continue to stare out at it until she was actually in the cell with him? 

If he was planning an escape, why just stare at the door and not look for any other way out? 

It was currently baffling her, but she felt relief to see him naturally asleep for once rather than drugs forcing him to be that way...

Allowing her subconscious to navigate the corridors since the location of her old office was still engrained in her mind, she was no sooner leaving her new office as she was reaching the door to the old one. She straightened slightly and stared at where her name used to be, now replaced with a sign that read 'Dr. Juliette Hart' in loopy, cursive handwriting. Her knuckles rapped lightly on the surface, receiving a soft call from inside, "Come in?"


	7. draft

Date: April 20th 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Office - 40th floor  
Time: 13:06

The door opened after a weak push on her part, swinging wide to reveal the familiar sight of what had been Cara's workplace for the last five years. Only it didn't seem so familiar, even though she'd only left five days previously; there was no furniture whatsoever in the room - the desk, chairs and couch swapped for an alternative array of brightly coloured bean bags, while the shelves were packed with books about psychology (the closest cover displaying the title - 'Psychiatry 101: Dealing With Tricky Patients').

The whole scene looked more like a child's play area than a room to seek help in but she bit her tongue, reminding herself it was no longer her room or her place to question Doctor Hart's methods. As she stepped over the threshold, a woman with highlighted brown hair curiously poked her head up from within the depths of a fluorescent pink bag, her sharp eyes meeting Cara's as she turned, "Hello? Who are you...?"

"Oh, um..." Cara was at a loss for words all of a sudden, part of her mind expecting the woman to be haunched over a cauldron, brewing bubbling poisons, but this girl was a complete contrast to that extreme her overactive imagination had conjured up, "I'm Agent Nielsen. This was my office before you arrived..."

"Oh... Cara, right?" she beamed toothily, clambering somehow gracefully out of the soft seat and stepping over the obstacle course of furnishings to shake her hand, "Some of the Avengers have spoken about you... Mr. Stark, especially..." Her tone changed almost unintelligibly, only someone with training in regards to verbal behaviour would notice, "I suppose he's part of the reason you're here...?"

She had to hand it to the girl, she was sharp-witted, but there was something about her tone when she mentioned Tony that made Cara feel uneasy about this cheerful front, "It's nothing major, I just thought I check in on you. Make sure you were coping... I know they can be a handful sometimes..."

"I think I'm fine. From what I've overheard, you've got a harder job on your hands with that patient downstairs..." Doctor Hart raised a meaningful eyebrow at her, her choice of words to describe Sergeant Barnes only serving to make Cara trust her even less. It wasn't any of her business to make remarks about Barnes, but she figured she'd be hypocritical to attack the girl for doing essentially the same thing she was by just being in the office - prying into things she had no business prying into.

But, there was no way she could just accept how this woman had apparently treated Tony, Pietro and Natasha - three of the team who required the most help when it came to dealing and coming to terms with their pasts. She couldn't leave without saying something.

She blindsided the intrusion about the Sergeant, turning the subject back on its head, "Tony appears to think your treatment isn't doing much to help certain people..." Sugar-coating it expertly, she folded her arms loosely and looked placidly at Doctor Hart, "These people are very close to my heart. I wouldn't like to think you're up here struggling to cope..."

"Believe me when I say I'm fine," she replied, a firmness edging into her voice as she stared back, "Was there anything else you wanted? Advice on how to treat Mr. Barnes, perhaps...? I did offer to treat him in the first place..."

"I'm not permitted to talk about the ongoing treatment of my patients." Cara maintained her professionalism, but the sickly sweet tone of the other woman's voice was beginning to make her skin crawl... Something wasn't right about her... something was off about her manner, her overwhelming kindness... and Cara wasn't sure she was all she seemed. 

Tony could be right about this chick.

"Well, neither am I, but here we are. Talking about our patients, are we not?" she said pointedly, gesturing towards a beanbag and merely shrugging when her offer was declined. Something in her gaze flickered and a moment later she was staring Cara directly in the eyes, "Not everyone can be fixed. An acclaimed therapist such as yourself should know that better than anyone... You just have to accept that..."

Cara could hear an underlying bite of venom in the younger girl's tone and her nose would be bigger than Pinocchio's if she said it didn't unnerve her slightly, "I'm not accepting anything. I haven't given up on a patient yet and Barnes will not taint that record... As long as he's in my care, there's hope for him-"

Doctor Hart cut her off with a cold, emotionless laugh, a mocking smile pulling at her lips and confirming her suspicions that there were, in fact, more layers to this woman. No one could be that nice without a snake lurking beneath the surface. "You really believe that? You think he understands or remembers a single word you say to him? He's empty inside - there's nothing beneath that hair or behind those eyes. I saw the press photos when he tried to kill Director Fury..."

"Then, you clearly don't know the first thing about psychiatry," Cara retorted, keeping her voice tame, but it was proving to be extremely difficult as Hart's words dug deep, "People are not always what they originally seem. Looks can be deceiving... I think you're the best example I've seen of that..."

The woman's eyes turned fierce, ablaze, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know exactly what I mean and if you don't start looking after your patients, I'll have no choice but to report you to Fury myself-"

"You can't do that," she argued angrily, a slight petulance emerging, "It's against S.H.I.E.L.D. protocol to interfere with another agent's job!"

"Well, I'm glad you read the rulebook, but who do you think Fury will listen to? Me, a trusted agent he's known for eleven years, or you? He's known you for five minutes - I've seen him fire agents quicker than that in the past..." Cara's temper was rising, but she fought to keep it back, knowing full well what could happen to her job security if she was seen to physically attack another agent - no matter how stuck up the receiving agent seemed to be.

"I think I'd like you to leave my office, Agent," Hart replied, her teeth audibly gritted in annoyance or anger - Cara didn't particularly care to know which, "Now, if you don't mind..."

Cara was happy to leave, but she refused to until she'd got her message across, "I'm leaving, but I'll be straight back up here if your patients come to me again, complaining about your conduct, and the next time I won't come alone. Start caring for all your patients or I'll get Fury up here and I can tell you now, he really doesn't like dealing with the Avengers' problems. That's why he hired a therapist. That's your job - do it."

Hart's scowl grew sourer if that were even possible, "Come up here again and I'll call him myself. You're the prized psychiatrist in his team... don't wanna disappoint him by starting unnecessary arguments, do we?"

"We'll see..." 

She left the room after those words, leaving her passive threat hanging in the air, trapping it inside as the door closed quietly behind her and sealed the gap between her and Agent Hart. A stuffy breath expelled itself from her lungs, making way for fresh air as she leaned back against the wall beside the door, hanging her head forward and questioning whether she'd gone too far.

The majority of her thoughts said no, convincing her she'd suitably warned Hart. There was no way she could allow that woman to continue letting her friends down, but if she let her own heart get in the way, it could jeopardise her own job and potentially leave someone as fragile as Barnes in the care of someone just like Doctor Hart - someone who agreed with him that he was a lost cause.

She couldn't let that happen...

"Cara," a sudden voice said, making her flinch before she looked up and found Pietro tilting his head at her, his silver hair falling to the side with it. Her mind momentarily questioned how he'd got there without her seeing, but then she remembered his abilities and immediately felt stupid for even wondering, "Stark said you would be up here..." He eyed the door to her left uneasily, the look in his eyes hardening her anger towards Hart.

"Hey Pietro..." He was dressed in sweatpants and a loose t-shirt, indicating he hadn't been out of the building since he'd arrived that morning - it seemed she'd been the only busy S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in the entire organisation, "Just, uh, don't tell Fury I was here, okay? I'm technically not supposed to talk to my successor..."

"I will not. Tony explained what he told you... but Fury does want to see you down in... well, down in 'the cell'...? He said you would know what that meant so it is something I'm not allowed to know, yes?" he raised an eyebrow, the slight smile playing on his lips causing her to mirror the gesture. Pietro had a knack for lightening the mood with even the simplest of actions and it helped in even the darkest of times.

"Alright..." If Fury wanted to see her in Sergeant Barnes' cell, there was definitely something worrying going on, but she kept her cool, refusing to worry Pietro especially after what Tony had said about his last session with Hart, "Walk down with me? It's boring in that elevator..."

He chuckled, nodding in acceptance of her offer, "Walking? I am not sure if I know what that is."

"It's easy. You just put one foot in front of the other without going at a hundred kilometres per hour," she joked, the way the laughter erased the previous unease in his eyes making her temper boil down to a simmer, "Come on, Sonic, I'll race you to the elevator...?"

In the split-second it took her to glance down the corridor, he was already gone in a flash, leaving her running after him and yelling how unfair it was as the sound of his laughs reverberated off the walls...

\--------------

Date: April 20th 20--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Corridor - 3rd floor  
Time: 13:49

She was still laughing, breathing hard, when Pietro made a swift exit, excusing himself as he already knew he wasn't permitted anywhere near Barnes for his own safety. Surprisingly, after the Ultron incident and his near-death, he was more respectful of rules and had even become (slightly) less reckless, making everyone's jobs easier if they didn't have to constantly look out for him, too. As long as he kept out of the line of fire, everyone was calm and collected and able to concentrate on other things such as actually defeating the enemy...

Keeping him away from sugar was seemingly helpful, too, since he had a disastrously sweet tooth...

She headed down the corridor, her heartbeat speeding up slightly as she assumed what lay beyond that fateful door wasn't going to be pretty. With a deep breath, she entered the cell room as per her daily routine, her previous laughter becoming a distant memory as she took in the scene on the other side of the door and her face fell.

Grave faces turned to meet her as she closed the door, the deadlock clanging and echoing throughout the silent room. Steve, Fury and Agent Batty all looked behind them as she entered, her expression matching theirs when she saw what they'd been watching - the only person without a worried look covering their face, but a tormented and pained one instead.

Sergeant Barnes was still unconscious from what she could see as he threw his head from side to side, but his features were contorted, his entire body thrashing against the bonds that tethered him to the bed. His mouth opened every few seconds between convulsions and if the cell weren't soundproofed, she knew her ears would be ringing from the yells of anger it expelled.

"Is it some sort of activation? Some Hydra plan...?" she asked, tearing her gaze from the troubling sight and addressing Fury, the constant movement still visible at the edge of her vision.

"He's asleep," the director replied, shaking his head, "All his vitals are normal except his heart rate. We believe he's having a nightmare.... but we can't wake him from out here... You're the only one he trusts so he's less likely to attack if you wake him..."

Cara wasn't sure she liked how he'd used the words 'less likely to attack'. It didn't exactly ease her conscience at the idea of waking up a traumatised patient in this state, "You want me to go in?"

She breathed a low sigh as he nodded and Steve gave her a solemn look, his eyes apologising with the words he probably didn't trust himself to say. "You'll be safe," Fury assured her, "If he lashes out, we're all out here..."

Gulping nervously, she forced a small smile and felt her hand subconsciously move to run across the syringes at her thigh as she stepped over to the door which became more and more familiar every day. After a few breaths, she stole a quick glance at Steve once more before entering the code and walking into the glass chamber, waiting for one side to close and the other to open until she was standing unprotected in the cell, the piercing sound of Barnes' cries filling her ears.

"Sergeant Barnes?" She tried calling out to him from a distance in the hopes that he'd wake without having to put herself in too much danger. When no response came except yells of distress, she plucked up the courage to take a step closer and try again, "Sergeant Barnes?"

With still no reply, she edged closer still, "James?"

She barely had a second to process what was happening as his thrashing ceased and his eyes suddenly shot open, the metallic cracking of chains reaching her ears a moment too late. Before she could move out of the way, a cool metal grip was around her neck, squeezing the air out of her throat as she fumbled to grab one of the needles, feeling a crushing sensation at the top of her spine which caused black spots to appear in her vision.

Her fingers clasped around an unknown canister of serum, but as the lack of oxygen took its toll on her brain, her muscles failed and it clattered to the ground, the noise drowned out by the tinnitus and pain engulfing her ears and throat. 

Her eyelids were the last to surrender, forcing her to see the hellfire and inhumanity in Barnes' eyes before her mind gave in to unconsciousness and she fell into someone's arms, her body only seconds away from crashing lifelessly to the floor....

\---------------

Date: April 20th 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Avengers' Medical Bay  
Time: 23:34

The tinnitus still lingered at the edges of Cara's hearing as she began to come around, her head aching as she blindly reached an arm up to pull away something irritating that was lay atop her face. 

"Ah... Cara, no. You've got to keep the mask on..."

Bruce's voice interrupted the shrill ringing but no matter how much she fought, her eyes and lips refused to open, leaving her blind and mute to the world as a warm hand gently moved her own away from her face and placed it beside her, "Don't move your head. Your spine was fractured in the scuffle and we're still waiting for it to heal. You're on an oxygen regulator and your neck is in a brace." That explained the feeling of hard plastic against the back of her head.

"You're lucky it didn't sever anything important," a voice she recognised as Clint's spoke up, "It could have been a lot worse-"

"Well, don't tell her that!" Someone who sounded suspiciously like Nat scolded him as she swore she heard Bruce chuckle. Everyone sounded slightly strange when she couldn't actually see them saying the words and had to work on hearing alone, making the entire conversation confusing as her mind fumbled to identify each speaker in turn.

"I'm telling her the truth," Clint's voice countered, footsteps accompanying it until she felt a presence she guessed was his to her left, "We don't even know if she can hear us..."

She pondered for a moment, trying to figure out how to communicate if her vocal chords were a no go before finding a glint of inspiration from the identity of the speaker. Lifting her hands, she heard Bruce make a noise of slight shock as she began signing, "I can definitely hear you, you dolt, but I can't open my eyes. I can't talk either. Where am I?"

Clint laughed softly beside her, "I'm not a dolt. You're the one who nearly got your neck broken, not me."

Realistically, he wasn't wrong - she'd brought the injury upon herself. Of course Barnes would be in a bad way after a traumatic nightmare, she should have taken that into account before she'd gotten so close. 

"What did she say?" Tony's voice suddenly appeared and questioned as Cara remembered the rest of the team only knew the basics of ASL just in case Clint needed to tell them something or ask for anything when he didn't have his hearing aids. S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't see any valid reason for them all to be fluent if Clint was - they didn't exactly meet many deaf or mute HYDRA agents.

"She can't see or speak," the archer paraphrased, leaving out the insult probably to protect his own dignity, "She can hear us though."

"Okay, I'm one hundred percent sure that wasn't how she worded it, but okay..." Sam spoke up, causing her to seriously question exactly how many of the team were currently surrounding her that she couldn't see, "How you feeling, Cara? Steve told us all what happened."

She signed again, Clint now acting as her temporary translator until her voice decided to work. "'Broken'," he read, chuckling at her word choice, "'and sore. How's Steve?' Steve's fine, he couldn't bare to see you like this so he's waiting outside with Thor, Vision and Wanda. Everyone else is here."

"Everyone?" she asked, slightly bewildered, hearing them all say 'yep' as a chorus when Clint translated, "Whoa, didn't know you all cared so much about me...?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Cara," Clint replied, seemingly leaving the others in the dark as she knew the gap between her signing and him speaking wasn't nearly long enough for him to have translated it, "Of course we care..."

"You think we don't?" Bruce asked, sounding slightly hurt, but his tone made it sound more like hurt for her rather than himself.

"I didn't mean it like that. I just thought you all might have more important things to do," she covered though in reality she hadn't expected any of them - other than Steve and Clint - to be overly worried by her injury. Bruce certainly didn't sound worried and he knew doctor stuff so she felt safe knowing he wasn't too concerned about the extent of the damage. 

There was a pause between her signing and Clint's relaying before Tony replied, "Oh, we do have important things to do, but we all refused to do them until we know you're okay. Fury is furious - I told him exactly where to stick his progress reports and-"

"No one wants to know, Tony," Nat cut in before Stark went into unnecessary details, "We're basically not supposed to be here, but we're rebels so we came anyway."

"Don't let me keep you from your duties," Cara insisted, scrunching her nose as the brace around her neck dug into her skin beneath her ears, "Jeez... this brace is uncomfortable..."

"None of us wanted to do duties anyway," Clint said earnestly, again not relaying the first part to the rest of the group, "They're boring and you're much more fun to talk to than random admins in the control room." His voice went quieter for a few seconds as the sound wasn't concentrated towards her, "Hey, Bruce? Is there anything we can do about the brace?"

While Bruce hummed and she heard him fiddling about to one side, she got to work on opening her eyes, knowing her throat would be too sore to speak, but wanting at least some way of interacting with everyone - currently, she didn't even know where she was for certain. With great difficulty and effort, she managed to get a thin slit of light to spill through her eyelids, the intensity forcing them closed straight away but, hey, at least she knew she could open them.

Trying again, she exerted all her strength into wrenching her eyelids apart, this time succeeding and allowing the bright LED shine from the lights above her head to flood in. They threatened to close again from the sheer sting the light induced, but she fought to keep them wide open, blinking quickly before looking around at those surrounding her.

As she suspected, she was lay flat on a bed in what appeared to be the medical bay, though she couldn't be sure since bodies obstructed her view of any signs or doors. Thankfully, when she peered down at herself - a very hard task whilst wearing a neck brace - she discovered she was still fully dressed in her uniform which indicated two things - one, no one had seen her naked or tried to remove her clothes while she was unconscious, and two, her injuries couldn't be too severe otherwise they would have changed her clothes in anticipation of a long stay.

She couldn't stay in the medical bay when Barnes needed help.

Yes, it may sound crazy to still feel the need to help someone who nearly killed you, but that action in itself further proved how desperate the man was inside. The strangling had been on instinct, probably a natural reflex from years of training with Hydra, meaning he most likely hadn't been in control for the entire episode - James Barnes didn't fracture her spine, the Winter Soldier did...

The glimpse of what she'd seen in his eyes before she passed out wasn't the honest, light-hearted boy from Brooklyn. She saw only the trained assassin in that moment, only hard, cold anger and hatred that coursed through his veins; her only guess was that, whatever the nightmare had involved, it had a direct affect on his actions when he woke up. Whether it was a Hydra plot or not, Cara was adamant that Barnes had no conscious role in what had happened - of course, no one else would see it that way...

"What happened to Barnes? Is he okay?" she asked no one in particular as, one by one, they all seemed to become aware of her open eyes. Nat and Tony were stood directly across from her while Pietro and Clint were to her right and Sam was on her left, him being the only one not looking at her as he watched Bruce cautiously lean over and tuck some padding of some sort around the plastic of the brace, making it slightly more bearable.

She smiled at the scientist before Clint replied, "Should've known you'd care more about Barnes than yourself..." There was a twinge of annoyance in his tone, but he buried it beneath a reluctant sigh, "He's been knocked out and moved back down to the holding cell he was in before until we know we can trust him again..."

"No!" she threw all the anger she had into her gaze to get her tone across, furiously signing while furrowing her eyebrows in question, "You can't do that! He'll never trust me again!"

"There's no way they'd keep him where he was, Cara," Sam reasoned, probably getting the gist of what she was saying from her actions since he spoke before Clint had a chance to translate or reply, "Fury knew you'd still want to treat him so he compromised. Restraining Barnes as much as possible was all he could do to ensure your safety... especially since you're dumb enough to still wanna go in there..." The last part was half-joking, but there was a hint of sincerity in his eyes before he glanced back towards Bruce.

"He's not going back in the open cell until your neck is fully healed," the scientist interrupted calmly, tilting his head to silently ask if the padding was okay, "By my guess, the brace can come off in a few days if you're careful. If you don't like it, bring it up with Fury, but he's not willing to put you in any danger he doesn't have to..."

"Next, he'll be sending in armed guards..." She knew it wasn't fair to take out her exasperation on them, but so far she'd heard nothing except bad news since the moment she'd come around. Perhaps being deaf was more peaceful - at least then she'd have a choice whether to listen to something rather than it being obligatorily picked up by her ears... Clint didn't know how good he had it...

Said archer shook his head firmly, "Armed guards is the one thing he won't do. He seems to agree with you that it needs to be one-on-one... Also, just a heads up, Coulson's pretty pissed that you didn't use the syringes..."

"I barely had time to think. That man just can't get it through his head that I'm not trained to be fast, I'm trained to treat patients..." she tried to huff a sigh, but her throat complained almost as soon as she opened her mouth so the annoyed sound remained caged behind her voice box, "I can't save them and save myself at the same time and at the moment, out of me and Barnes, I think I know who's life S.H.I.E.L.D. values more..."

"Don't you dare say that. That's ridiculous thinking!" Clint argued, the rest of the room looking to him curiously at his sudden outburst before turning to her.

"What is ridiculous thinking?" Pietro spoke up, asking the question on everyone's lips but Clint and Cara's, "What did she say?" His blue eyes flickered between the archer and the therapist, anticipating an answer as everyone else mimicked his confused interest.

Clint turned to them briefly, his jaw set, "She thinks Fury cares more about Barnes than her-"

She hastily swung out an arm and whacked him in the side, making him look down at her after a small 'oof', "I never said Fury. Fury does care about me. Coulson and the rest of the senior staff, though? They have a captive Hydra agent with possible secrets... and a therapist - I know who I'd choose if I ran S.H.I.E.L.D., don't you?"

The assassin didn't reply, giving her the exact answer she'd expected through his silence. 

"Clint?" Natasha silently moved to stand beside him and placed a tentative hand on his shoulders as his gaze remained fixed on Cara's, searching for some kind of weakness in the firewall she'd deployed behind her eyes while it all went to hell inside her mind.

"You're so wrong... it hurts that you can't see it..." he muttered, blinking away the mist that had begun to form at the edges of his eyes.

Bruce glanced between the two of them, seemingly just as clueless as the rest of them, but it didn't take a genius (and there were two in the room) to connect to dots between the snippets of conversation they'd all heard, "I think it'd be best if we leave Cara to sleep some more, okay? Everyone out. Doctor's orders..."

Reluctantly, the room began to empty, everyone stopping at the foot of her bed with their get well messages before being ushered out by Bruce. Nat pulled lightly at Clint's arm, but he didn't budge, "Why can't you see that you're wrong?"

Cara stared back at him, her lip beginning to quiver at the sight of heartbreak in his eyes, but she held firm, signing one last time before he was dragged out, "Why can't you accept the truth?"


	8. draft

Date: April 21st 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Avengers' Medical Bay  
Time: 00:16

Day 7 (Sixth day of treatment)

Cara was left to her own thoughts after that, attempting to sleep but finding the betrayal in Clint's eyes as he left the room haunting her any time she closed her own. She'd never seen such despair in his eyes, not even after Sokovia - it was heartbreaking, reflected and distorted in her mind like a funhouse mirror image. As the second hand of the clock ticked past midnight, the guilt began to set in, her conscience beginning to question if he really was right. 

Five days worth of treatment had shown her enough about Barnes for her to be able to formulate a plan for how to tackle his problems, but at no point had she ever considered her own safety. She had the syringes, of course, but she'd been physically injured twice now and the idea of grabbing a needle and sedating him still felt wrong in her mind. Yes, he had proven he could kill her if he wanted to... but did he really want to?

It wasn't as though he hadn't had a chance to - if he'd wanted to kill her, she'd have been dead after the first session...

Everyone has murderous thoughts at some point or another, but they aren't murderers unless they act on them. Obviously, Barnes had killed people in the past - he knew that himself - but she wasn't sure if he could truly be classed as a murderer if his mind had been twisted and contorted to believe he was doing the right thing. Blaming him would be like blaming a Rottweiler for mauling someone after its owner raised it with a violent mindset - Sergeant Barnes was a puppy with the most violent owners of all.

She knew one thing for sure. No matter how many injuries she contracted, her treatment of Barnes would remain ongoing. This was the sort of case she'd been preparing for over the last ten years - a case where she was actually in charge, where she was making a difference - and she wasn't going to give that up over a few fractured discs in her spine. She had faith, and with faith people could move mountains...

Still, Clint had a point - going in with no value for her own life wasn't going to change anything about Barnes, it was just going to get her killed. She'd been too caught up with the mass of progress they'd made, that how other people cared about her had been completely eradicated from her mind; she was treating it like a suicide mission, like the be all and end all of her career, and in doing that had forgotten that there were people who would care if she died... many people in fact...

She'd been blindingly selfish.

She'd hurt the people closest to her, like a bullet careering towards its target but chipping off shrapnel and debris into the hearts of anyone standing too close. Clint may have just prevented her from severing any arteries before the shards dug too deep...

\---------------

Twelve hours later, at around midday, Bruce finally dismissed her, partly due to Fury's instruction but mainly because of her constant complaining about being stuck in bed. The Avengers had all, if reluctantly, returned to their actual jobs and, since the week had passed her by without her noticing, that also meant Steve's temporary break from duties was over. She hadn't seen him since the incident; Clint informed her the all-American soldier had spent most of the night back at Stark tower, being there before the rest of them got back and staying in his room until they'd all left that morning.

"Don't worry about him," Bruce had assured her when she wrote down the question on a notepad, his eyes scanning her face for any sign of pain as he adjusted the brace to a comfortable standard, "He's just beating himself up about it. You know what Steve's like..."

"Yeah, I do..." she scribbled in reply, taking the hand he offered and allowing him to guide her to a standing position as her head span from vertigo, "He's too compassionate for his own good..."

"I'm feeling a little deja vu from that sentence. Hypocrite much?" He cocked his head to the right slightly but chuckled to show he wasn't serious.

"I know, I know," Cara steadied herself against his outstretched arm and the side table the notepad and pen were sat on, staring down at her feet in the hopes it might show her brain what it was supposed to be controlling. Teetering ever so slightly, she glanced back up and scrawled, "We're all as bad as one another, really... I suppose we'd all be willing to die for someone else in the team..."

"In a heartbeat," he replied quickly, giving almost no thought to the commitment as he carefully retracted his arm and allowed her to stand unaided, "Let's just hope it never comes to that... How does that feel?"

She was confused for a second until she realised he was referring to the vertigo which was slowly clearing, "Better. Did you say Fury was down in the holding cell?"

Bruce read the paper and nodded, his eyes clouding with concern as she got used to the feeling of the neck brace sitting on her shoulders since its weight had previously been concentrated on the mattress beneath it. It wasn't as heavy as she'd expected, but it would still take a bit for her to adjust, "Just... be careful, okay? I don't want to have to fix any more injuries Barnes causes if they're preventable... You have a lot of people who care for your wellbeing; none of us want to see you get killed by your own selflessness... Clint's right-"

"I know he is." He cut himself off as she began scribbling again, her eyes full of honesty when he searched them, "I'm going in with both eyes open this time. I was too blinded by my work that I didn't take into account exactly who I was treating... or what he was capable of... I guess I just want to help him..."

"We all want to help him, Cara, and we're supporting you in this, but I refuse to support a suicide mission..." Bruce's gaze bore into hers, "Promise me you'll make use of those needles if you need to. Seeing you in pain isn't exactly helping with 'the other guy'..."

The sincerity in his voice was like a punch to the gut as she realised how much suffering her reckless attitude had caused. Her hand trembling feverishly, she managed to write, "I promise..."

\------------

Date: April 21st 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Holding Cell 03 - Exterior  
Time: 12:34

"Nielsen," Cara was met by Fury's voice as soon as she entered the observation room, catching a glimpse of herself in the surface of the far door, the neck brace almost dwarfing her shoulders. She'd found out the hard way that scaling stairs whilst wearing it was near impossible, meaning it had taken her more than twice as long to get down there from the medical room as it usually would, "It's good to see you up and about. I was beginning to worry Banner had put you on bed rest."

"He wanted to but I wouldn't let him," she forced a smile, the words written on a notepad Bruce had allowed her to keep, but the expression immediately dropped as her eyes caught sight of the figure on the other side of the glass partition. 

The last time she'd seen him chained up in such a way was the first time she'd encountered the soldier, when he'd been thrashing about in anger and distress at being captured and imprisoned in such a foreign place. She hoped her sessions had something to do with the more serene look his face bore currently as he stared straight back not so much at her but at the contraption around her neck. His hand was back in the clamp, but this time he was making no move to break free. 

Fury noticed the shift in her focus as he realised she was looking over his shoulder rather than at him. He turned, too, and faced Barnes, "How's the neck?"

"Sore," she replied, the hand not holding up the notepad subconsciously reaching up to rub it, but stopping when she came into contact with cool plastic rather than flesh, "Clint pointed out it could have been a lot worse..."

"If Rogers hadn't charged in there and caught you when he did, it could well have been..." he said nonchalantly, his hands clasped behind his back and his eye glancing to her for a moment before looking back at the man on the other side of the window.

So it was Steve's arms that she fell into? She guessed it made sense: saving her while someone else dealt with the violence - that seemed to be the Captain America way after all, "Has he said anything since last night?" 

She sent a nod in the direction of the glass. Fury shook his head, "Not a word. In fact, the way he looked up when you walked in was the first sign of life we've seen from him. Coulson's still convinced it's some major plot, but I said you could be the judge of that. That is why I assigned you..."

Barnes' gaze was still fixed on her, slightly unnerving in its intensity, but she didn't look away, "Will you let me go in there with him? I doubt playing pictionary through the glass will be very effective...?"

The director considered it, looking to Barnes before looking to her and back again, "I'll let you in if you'll stay at least two metres away at all times... and don't let him get a hold of you... We've had enough scares for one week..."

She somehow managed a hum from the depths of her sore throat, nodding, "Got it. Are you staying here?"

He quickly shook his head, "I'll call for Agent Batty and Rogers. They'll get here in less than five minutes... I think I can trust you to defend yourself for that long..."

"You can, Sir, thank you..." 

Cara turned slowly, her movements still shaky since the brace cut off her eye line to her feet so she couldn't see what they were doing, making walking in general particularly hard. Though she'd cut off eye contact with the troubled man on the other side of the transparent wall, she could still feel his gaze follow her until she went out of sight and headed down the short, darker corridor to the entrance of the cell.

Fury followed behind her at a distance, but halted at the corner, the door to outside behind him, "Good luck, Agent. Stay safe."

She met his gaze and put on a brave face, deciding not to write a reply since one wasn't really necessary. Taking a hoarse breath which sent ripples of pain through her throat, she coughed once, ignoring how much it irritated, and unlocked the door...

\--------------

Date: April 21st 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Holding Cell 03 - Interior  
Time: 12:49

The feeling of déjà vu was becoming all too real as Cara entered the room Sergeant Barnes was chained down in, her mind casting back to the countless times this had already happened. She had to admit, this time was the most calm he'd ever been at the sight of her, but that meant nothing as far as someone with PTSD was concerned - he may look placid on the outside, but the inner turmoil was still lingering just behind his eyes as he stared up at her.

She kept her back to the glass, maintaining the distance Fury had recommended and momentarily breaking eye contact with Barnes to write on the paper, but his voice cut her off before her pen even scratched the surface. 

"You can't talk," he observed. She lifted her eyes to meet his, nodding the best she could with the brace beneath her chin, "I caused that, didn't I?"

"Yes, you did," she scribbled, holding the paper up for him to read. She refused to sugarcoat things for her patients - Barnes wasn't getting special treatment despite the heavy precautions. His gaze visibly scanned the words before looking back up at her face, giving her chance to write the next part of her sentence, "A disc at the top of my spine is fractured. My throat is too swollen for me to speak."

"You were there..." She furrowed her eyebrows slightly until he clarified, "In my... dream... You were there... and... you were torturing me... you worked for them and you were torturing me..."

That would explain why he'd strangled her when he woke up. She supposed it was a natural reaction... He didn't sound too upset by the dream, or traumatised as she'd expected after seeing the state he'd been in, but more confused than anything else. Like he was trying to decipher himself and had hit a wall.

She hummed quietly, choosing what she wrote next very carefully after the brief mention of Hydra. It wasn't that she was scared of his reaction, more that she hated to see him in such distress, "And you can identify that it was a dream now? When did you figure that out?"

He was quiet for a moment, his face awash with deep thought before he answered, "About an hour after I was brought here..." His free hand gestured vaguely to the holding room they were in, "I was... angry - for so long - but then I started to think about it... I realised it made no sense..."

"Which parts didn't make sense?" She was pressing into unchartered waters but S.H.I.E.L.D. needed to know what Hydra was capable of and she needed to know the extent of what they'd done. 

"Your face was... distorted somehow..." he tried to explain, his expression crumpling and his body twitching spastically once or twice as he delved straight back into what he'd seen in his mind. His fists clenched, but he seemed to keep himself stable without any input from Cara - yet more visible progress, "It felt like I was looking at you through a frosted window... like you weren't completely there..."

So, she was combating more than just a brainwashing here - something more sinister had been done to his mind. The only conclusion she could make at present was that the serum had side effects; side effects that Steve didn't encounter because the version he was given wasn't a Hydra knock-off. Who knew what parts of the recipe they'd got wrong?

"Did it feel real to you?" she tried, the pain in his eyes already answering her question before it was written and shown to him.

He nodded, gulping and closing his eyes before taking a deep breath, "Very... If i hadn't seen the shock in your eyes when I... well, you know... I would've believed every bit of it... You looked too innocent for it to add up... I'm sorry..."

"Don't be. Like I said before, just because the Winter Soldier is violent doesn't mean you are." She was determined to get that message into his head and she was willing to repeat it every day if that's what it took. He had to disassociate himself with his past, otherwise it would drag him back down...

"This is what I meant, though. Times like this when I can't control myself... No matter what you say, I know I'm dangerous. I know I'm a-"

"No, you're not." 

Both of them looked around in bewilderment, Barnes' face filling with child-like fear as a crackly but familiar voice inserted itself into their conversation above their heads. Cara managed to identify the source as the intercom and whipped around (carefully, due to the neck brace), finding herself face to face with Steve, only a thick pane of glass separating them as he glanced at her, gave a tight smile, and then looked straight past her at where the Sergeant was tethered. "Don't you dare say you're a monster, James Buchanan Barnes, because I won't hesitate to come in there."

Agent Batty stood off to one side, sending a shrug in Cara's direction as if to say 'I had no part in this'. She honestly wasn't surprised - Steve had a habit of doing things because it felt right without consulting other people first. Usually his instinct was right, but that was besides the point.

Clasping the pen tightly, she rapidly scrawled, "Steve, you're not allowed to ta-"

The Captain didn't even let her finish writing and hold the paper up before he cut her off, "I know I'm not supposed to, but that's my best friend, Croft. I won't let him degrade himself. Not while I'm around..."

"S-Steve...?"

Both Steve's and Cara's eyes widened, their conversation all but abandoned as they looked round at Barnes who was staring straight back at the man on the other side of the glass, wonder and confusion flooding his face. Steve stared, too, equally as shocked if not more so by the recognition that had just been triggered in Barnes's mind - to say it was a milestone would be an understatement.

He remembered Steve. Or at least, he could put a name to his face...

A silence fell throughout both rooms, no one daring to speak, asking each other with their eyes whether they'd all actually heard Steve's name come from the patient's mouth. After a few moments they seemed to come to the unanimous decision that, no, they weren't all having some strange dream, Barnes really had just identified his friend on the opposite side of the glass.

"Rogers, I think it's best if you left..." Agent Batty's voice was quieter through the speaker due to her distance from the microphone as she glanced between the three in front of her, two through the window and the other in the same room, "Don't you have something else to do? Cara doesn't need any more difficulties... I can handle it from here..."

Steve's gaze flickered to Cara, somewhat disheartened. He opened his mouth to speak but was, again, cut off by Barnes behind her, "Don't... please... don't leave..."

The Sergeant himself seemed unsure of his own words, but they were enough to bring everyone's attention back to him, his gaunt eyes lingering on each face in turn before falling back to their previous focus on his chest - it had been fixed there ever since he'd said Steve's name. "Why do I know your name?" he muttered, his breaths heavy as he looked up at Steve again, "I don't know you... Do I?"

Steve opened his mouth again to answer, but sighed resignedly as she held up an index finger to silence him, her other hand scrawling away on her notepad, "You do know him. Remember we talked about him before? When we talked about the 'Howling Commandos'?"

She watched the soldier read the words as she held it in front of him, but after he was finished, she received no verbal or physical response, his face a mask hiding whatever was going on in his mind. "James...?" Steve's voice said both behind her and above her head, the latter much clearer and amplified as the sound wasn't muffled by a thick layer of glass.

Barnes exhaled sharply through his nose before meeting his former best friend's gaze, "My name is Bucky - I... think I... read about you in a museum..."

Cara was surprised at his sudden insistence on the nickname she'd been advised not to say aloud, but she didn't pick him up on it, instead shaking her head ever so slightly at Batty, who was visibly deliberating whether to insist on Steve's departure, and taking a step back to be a simple bystander to the conversation between her patient and Steve. The Captain's gaze flickered to hers, almost asking for permission to speak, and the corners of his lips angled upwards as she discreetly nodded back.

"You're in a museum, too, Buck," his voice sounded slightly forced as he fought back against the emotion that threatened to consume him, "We all are. Jim, Dernier, Gabe, James... even Dum managed it..."

"I know," Barnes' tone sounded pained though she wasn't sure if it was from the subject or from having to repeat the things he'd already recounted to her. Either way, the edge was gone when he spoke again, "I partly know who I was... and I partly know who I am... and I know enough to figure out that those are two very different people..."

"You're still you though, Buck... What Hydra did to you doesn't change that..."

Cara's breath hitched painfully in her throat as the forbidden name slipped from Steve's tongue, her eyes going immediately to where Barnes was chained up, rapidly gauging his reaction. Steve's eyes went wide as he realised what he'd said and Agent Batty's hand went instinctively to the pistol strapped to her holster as Cara did the same with the needles, telling herself she could use them if necessary. She wasn't convinced she actually could stab him with one, but she knew she was on video - her first thought not being the needles would alarm certain members of senior staff *cough* Coulson *cough* and she had to convince them to allow further therapy for Barnes.

The Sergeant was quicker to catch on than any of them expected, though, and remained reasonably calm as he said, "Mentioning Hydra doesn't bother me, okay?" He was focused more on Cara than the other two, possibly remembering how he'd hurt her not long after the last time the organisation was mentioned, "I've had time to adapt to the anger... Clearly, I can't deal with nightmares but... I hate what they made me do and I hate that I hurt you..."

"You remember what they made you do?" Cara shot Steve a look, warning him wordlessly how thin the ice he was treading on was. One wrong word and there was a possibility Barnes could be gone within seconds.

"I don't wanna talk about it..." Barnes' voice was tight, discomfort edging into it as he turned his head, and therefore his focus, to her, "Do you really believe what you said before?"

"You'll have to be more specific," she wrote down after he didn't elaborate, Steve remaining surprisingly quiet, "I said a lot of things. I wasn't sure you were listening to me sometimes..."

"I did listen. I mean when you said I wasn't a lost cause... Do you still believe that?" His eyes searched hers, scrutinising every part of her face like it would give him a hint of truth. She simply nodded, watching his gaze flicker to the floor before back up at her, "...Thank you..."

Cara tilted her head carefully to one side rather than writing down 'Why?'. This was the Barnes she'd been trying to uncover since the beginning barely a week ago - she just hadn't expected to find him so early on. It was amazing progress, but it scared her slightly and she realised that all this time she'd been treating him like any of her other patients...

But, he would never be like the others. 

Barnes had been through so much, no one could possibly know how his mind processed things anymore; how he saw the world and how his brain coped with it was completely unique to him. If it hadn't been caused by such horrors, she'd be tempted to say it was amazing - perhaps he was intelligent enough to get his head reasonably set on his shoulders in such a short period of time.

"You don't work like other agents, do you?" he asked, his hair falling in his face as he looked towards her, "You wouldn't still be here if you did..."

"That's why I wanted her to treat you, Buck," Steve spoke up, reminding everyone he was still there and drawing Barnes' attention back to him, "I wouldn't trust anyone else but Cara." He sent a small smile in her direction and she felt a warmth spread across her cheeks at his words. Her occupation wasn't one where you usually made friends but, somehow, she'd managed just that.

Barnes didn't say anything after that. Whether he was too deep in thought or simply had nothing else to say, she would probably never know, but she knew one thing...

At the beginning of the treatment, she'd thrown a rope into the abyss of her patient's mind. Now, seven days later, James Barnes had grabbed ahold of the end...

All she had to do now was haul him out...


	9. draft

Date: April 21st 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Holding Cell 03 - Exterior   
Time: 13:37

Cara stepped out of the cell not long after that, leaving a calm Barnes to his own thoughts. She deeply disliked him remaining in the cell but, until she could convince Fury and Coulson to allow him back into his old cell room, they would all just have to grin and bear it. Steve met her on the other side, smiling gratefully in the slightly darker observation room.

"This is good, right? He remembers me...?" His eyes were bright with hope for the first time since he'd hauled the Sergeant into S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters. To her, Barnes remembering anything was a triumph, but Steve was his best friend - being remembered after all that time was certainly a big deal. Plus, he'd been waiting to get his friend back ever since he knew he was alive, two years previous.

She nodded in response, giving him a thumbs up and a grin which conveyed the message better than her pen and paper could. Steve's expression went brighter, if that were even possible, radiating light in the dim surroundings.

"I knew you were best for him. I'm just glad you didn't give up when he hurt you... that sounded bad... I mean-" He began fumbling over his words, turning slightly pink in embarrassment as he so regularly did when talking about anything other than work.

Agent Batty seemed to notice and cut him off, saving him from the embarrassment that would inevitably spill from his lips if he kept rambling, "I think she knows what you mean, Captain..." 

"Please, call me Steve," he offered quickly (slightly too fast to seem natural), turning and looking at the agent who was perched on the edge of one of the control panels - there were no scientists or examiners in the room, just the three of them and Barnes. Fury correctly guessed that the fewer people there were around him, the better. "Everyone else does..."

Cara glanced between the two of them, raising an eyebrow at Steve's flustered face which was staring at Batty's rather unfazed one, eyes slightly wide - now it seemed the redness wasn't entirely to do with the therapist... The female agent was silent for a couple of seconds before she replied, "Hope. That's my name. No one calls me it around here, but I guess I can let you... 'Agent Batty' gets a little annoying after a while..."

"Hope," Steve tested it out as Cara made a mental note to call the agent by her first name once her voice recovered, "It suits you..."

"Good job it's my name, then, isn't it?" Hope countered sharply, causing Steve to blink a few times and bring himself back to planet Earth. God knows where he'd floated off to while he was gawping at her...

It didn't take a genius (and Cara wasn't one) to see how badly he'd fallen for the blonde beside her. She'd noticed how his eyes lingered on Batty ever since the two had first met but, knowing Steve, he wouldn't try to make a move any time soon - he was a hopeless romantic even though most girls would give their left arm to be with the Captain America. Steve was - and always had been - completely oblivious to the attention he drew.

But, unfortunately (for him), it didn't look like Hope felt anywhere near the same as she tapped her foot against the base of one of the swivel chairs and tilted her head indifferently away from Steve, "Nielsen, are you leaving now?"

Cara looked towards her, noting her nonchalance towards Steve and feeling a slight pity for him, before looking past at where Barnes was, unsurprisingly, watching them. He couldn't hear them - the comms system had been switched off - but that didn't mean he couldn't watch. There was nothing else for him to do.

She caught his gaze and smiled, the look in his eyes a mixture of peacefulness and intrigue, before nodding in response to the question. Though she'd like to stay and attempt to make further progress, Barnes had proven that time to himself helped his mental state in the way he'd calmed himself down after almost strangling her to death. That's how it worked now; the positives served to outweigh the negatives.

"I'll stay here. Keep an eye on him," Steve announced to no one in particular as he shook off his embarrassment, prompting Cara to scribble down a hasty response.

"Just don't talk to him," she saw his face fall slightly as he read on, "I know you want to, but I need to monitor his progress. It sounds horrible but, for the moment, I think he trusts me more than you. He's still rebuilding his memories of you."

"Yeah... I get it," he nodded, a disheartened twinge in his voice, "Don't talk to him. That doesn't mean I can't keep an eye on him, does it?"

She shook her head, ignoring the friction the brace caused against her tender neck. The corners of Steve's mouth twitched upwards again and he glanced back at Barnes.

"I'll make sure he doesn't say a word, Agent," Hope assured her, straightening up and pushing herself away from the control board to sit in the swivel chair she'd been kicking. She pulled her legs up beneath her in a surprisingly childlike manner, crossing them, "I think you deserve at least a half hour rest. Don't worry about these two. They're in capable hands..."

\---------------

Date: April 21st 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Corridor - 2nd floor  
Time: 13:50

The hallway outside was weirdly silent as Cara closed and locked the door behind her, the light click it made forming the only sound around her. It seemed Fury really had left them to their own devices, heeding her earlier suggestions that safe and secure-feeling solitude was the best for Barnes. Despite all the killings he'd carried out, the Sergeant was currently under her care and she was stubborn about how her patients were treated - he knew Hope's face well enough now to be comfortable with her in the room, a full troop of guards wouldn't be as reassuring...

He was a very troubled man. There was no point adding to his list of uncertainties and insecurities with threats and weapons.

She turned to head towards the elevator on the south side of the building but a pair of crimson hands caught her shoulders suddenly, moments before she would have face-planted a sweater-covered chest, "Miss Nielsen. You really should watch where you are going."

Looking up, she met a pair of green eyes, "Vision, I didn't see you... You're extremely quiet, you know?"

The android tilted his head questioningly, releasing her shoulders and allowing her to step back to a comfortable level of personal space, "I have been informed of that. My purpose is not to make noise."

"That's not what I- ...Never mind." Trying to explain some things to Vision was difficult so she actively tried to avoid it, changing the subject and signing again (Vision knew sign language because, well, Vision knew everything), "Why are you down here? I thought you were in the lab all day today?"

"That is my schedule, but Mr. Barton, Mr. Stark, Mr. Maximoff and Mr. Wilson each individually requested for me to come down and see if you were well as they cannot spare any time from their duties. I promised I would find out and report back to them," he explained matter-of-factly, his gaze scanning her figure, "Are you well?"

"I'm feeling better than I was," she smiled, receiving a mirrored one in return - one of Vision's attempts to appear more human. He was doing well; if his pigment wasn't so vivid, no one would know that blood didn't flow beneath his skin, "Where are those guys? I could save you the trouble and tell them myself."

"It's no trouble, Miss Nielsen, but if you must know, Mr. Barton is training with Miss Romanoff on the fifty-sixth floor, Mr. Maximoff is running laps around the building and Mr. Stark is showing a new invention to Mr. Wilson in the lab. They tried to contact your earpiece, but received no reply. I suggested it may have been to do with your inability to speak."

"I left it in my office..." she cursed herself for being so thoughtless. Of course, they'd want to keep a check on her recovery - it was like having three fathers (and an overprotective brother - Pietro) sometimes, "I'll head up to the lab to see Tony and Sam... Are you coming, too?"

"With respect, Miss, I believe Miss Maximoff wished to talk with me earlier- Correction, Mr. Maximoff is now in training, too. He just returned," he righted his earlier statement, looking down at her.

"Thanks, Vision, I suppose I'll see you later?" Cara suggested and the android nodded, the glowing orb in his forehead seemingly brighter in the dim light of the hallway.

"I commend what you are doing for Mr. Barnes, Miss Nielsen. It is a very honourable endeavour. I trust you will succeed," he glanced towards the door behind her before looking back at her again, "And, yes, I look forward to our next meeting. If I were capable of emotions, I think I would enjoy our encounters greatly.

His comment made her smile, it being the closest Vision could get to a sincere compliment, "I enjoy talking to you, too."

\-----------------

Date: April 21st 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Tony Stark's Laboratory  
Time: 14:08

Tony and Sam both looked up as the door opened automatically for her, after she typed in the pass code, and allowed her to step into the lab. There were two sides to the laboratory set-up - Bruce's and Tony's - separated by a line of tables and clearly discernable from one another. They were so drastically different, she'd begun to see them as separate laboratories since one scientist would barely notice when she came to talk to the other.

Bruce's side was where all the chemicals were kept neatly in racks, but the paperwork was scattered everywhere since his science was more important to him than the legal stuff. He had four lab tables, positioned in a square in the middle of his area, each one cluttered with paper, files and test tubes that weren't immediately useful to him so he'd only look for them when they were needed - sometimes that took days of searching. She only hoped he never put anything vital underneath that mess...

Tony, on the other hand, was surprisingly more organised. It was mainly due to the fact most of his work was done digitally, hence why he chose to push all the tables to the edges of the room to make space for his holo screens and enough room to walk around them. It was the polar opposite of Bruce's workspace which made her wonder how they ever managed to work along side each other, especially since Bruce seemed to dislike hypothetical computer experiments and Tony had a thing against writing things down manually.

"Cara, how you doing?" Sam asked, leaving Tony to whatever he was fiddling with on-screen and navigating his way towards her through the maze of monitors.

As he approached, she gave him a thumbs up, figuring she didn't need to write that down.

"Cool," he replied, his eyes flickering momentarily to her neck brace before continuing, "Guessing Vision found you, then? He barely left five minutes ago."

"Ten," Tony interrupted, swiping something off the screen and not looking up. He had the ever-present look of tiredness in his eyes, but the liveliness in the rest of his face seemed to overshadow it, hiding the real Tony from the world - that was his worst habit.

Sam looked at him, bewildered slightly by his abrupt interjection, "Ten what?"

"Baby-Thor left ten minutes ago. I checked," Tony stated. He looked up, ignoring the bitch face Sam shot at him, and walked over to Cara, placing his hands gently on her upper arms in an almost fatherly manner, "How are you, Nielsen? Has Bucky-the-Hydra-Slayer apologised or do I need to give him a stern talking to?"

"I literally already asked her that-"

"Yeah... but I kinda zoned out at the sound of your voice. No offence," he added though the look of annoyance in Sam's eyes said it was a bit late for that, "I thought I'd talk because the sound of my own voice pleases me aesthetically." Tony took one hand off her shoulder to wave his hand vaguely towards his mouth.

Sam coughed, muttering something that sounded a lot like 'asshole' under his breath, just loud enough for Cara to hear. She let out a small laugh though her nose, causing Tony to glance quickly between the two of them, probably realising he'd missed something. "I better get going anyway," Sam announced before Stark could form a sarcastic remark, smiling slightly at her and winking, "Got a training session with Tasha in twenty minutes and I figure the only way I'll beat her is to get down there before she does. It's good to see you recovering..."

She smiled and nodded in response as he turned towards the door before spinning back and flipping Tony the finger as the billionaire made a comment Cara didn't really want to repeat (it involved Natasha doing something very painful to Sam's manhood, that's as far as she'd go). She watched his back retreat out of the room, shuddering slightly at the horrific image Tony had placed in her mind...

"Anyway..." said billionaire brought her attention back to him, drawing out the word, "You didn't answer my question... Bird-Boy's question... whatever."

Cara pulled the notepad out of the pocket of her uniform and began writing, sensing Tony's eyes following the tip of the pen, "My throat is still sore so Bruce told me not to attempt speaking for a day or so. Bucky's calmed down - I think he's really starting to remember Steve..."

"That's good to hear. Maybe Capsicle will stop complaining about you getting hurt now?" he turned away for a second to silence a monitor that had begun bleeping while she was writing, ignoring whatever the alarm was for (as usual), "I mean, I get where he's coming from, but even I can see that you can handle yourself. I'm not worried about you helping Barnes."

"I wish Steve shared your optimism. If he did, he could spend more time trying to score a date instead of looking out for me..." Tony's eyes widened at the word 'date', his mouth dropping open in pure shock.

"The old man's scoring? Since when? Why was I not informed?" He rested his elbows on the nearest table and placed his chin in his hands, looking up at her in child-like amusement, "Tell me everything. Don't spare any details."

Cara chuckled, pulling out a lab stool and sitting on it before beginning to write. Even if hardly anything seemed likely to land Steve a date with Hope, a little intervention from Stark surely wouldn't hurt. 

Plus, she figured she could use a bit of fun after the week she'd had. The look in Tony's eyes as he scanned the words she was scrawling said he was already plotting something spectacular...

\-----------

Date: April 22nd 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Dr. Banner's Laboratory   
Time: 09:45

Day 8 (Seventh day of treatment)

By the next day, Cara had rested up and, after a visit to Bruce, she was released from the neck brace, trading it instead for some padding and bandages which kept her neck in the right position while it healed whilst still being reasonably comfortable. It still wasn't good enough for Fury, though, as he insisted Barnes would remain in the holding cell until her neck was fully healed.

Her voice was slowly making a comeback, but it was currently more of a Spice Girls comeback than a Fall Out Boy one i.e. extremely painful. She spent an hour in the lab with Tony and Bruce, trying various methods of improving her speech without causing her pain before coming to the conclusion that, however she got her voice back, it was going to hurt.

"Thanks... anyway... guys..." she rasped, sounding like a pack-a-day smoker rather than a thirty-one year old who had never touched a cigarette in her life. Her voice was barely audible as she winced with every syllable, but they somehow heard, both nodding and giving her sympathetic smiles from either side of the room as she stood by the door.

"No problem," Tony replied as Bruce got back to whatever work he was doing and became deaf to the world around him in the process. Trying to have a conversation with him in that state was pointless, meaning Tony - who talked to himself regularly - was probably the best research partner for him - he never expected a reply to his ramblings, "If you see Lover-boy on your travels, tell him I wanna see him. He'll have a date before the week's out..."

"Can't..." Cara tried to speak, but the words got caught in her throat, causing her to cough, "Can't... you just... contact him...?" She gestured towards her earpiece she'd actually remembered to pick up for once.

"He doesn't wear one. He barely understands a mobile phone, giving him an earpiece like the rest of us would blow his mind..." he said nonchalantly, most of his attention back on the screen in front of him, his eyes blinking rapidly every few seconds as he yawned.

This small habit began to worry Cara and she stepped away from the door, going back over to him and tilting her head to one side in concern, "When was... the last time... you slept through the... night...?"

"What?" He looked up at her for a second in scared bewilderment before turning away, trying to hide the signs she'd already seen, "No, no, I'm sleeping fine... I've just... got something in my eye, that's all..."

"Tony," she said as sternly as she could with the state her throat was in, "don't... lie to me... You're a... terrible liar..."

Tony stopped in his tracks, his shoulders deflating visibly. He took a deep breath, blowing it out in a huff before turning on his heel to face her, "How can you still be so perceptive after not treating me for over a week? I'm still going with the whole spy idea..." She gave him a look that told him to stop avoiding the subject, "Fine! Four days... It's been four days..."

"Why... haven't you told... Hart...?" Something resembling disgust flickered in his gaze at the mention of the insufferable woman, "I know... you hate her... but it's her... job... to help you..."

"I wouldn't tell that woman if I was dying, Cara..." he spat pointedly, his expression transforming into a grimace, but the tiredness still slipped through the seams, "Even then, she wouldn't do anything helpful..." He cast his gaze to the floor, shaking his head, "I told you. She doesn't give two shits about any of us..."

From what she'd seen of the younger therapist, Cara found her heart agreeing with him, but her head argued she had to remain professional, "Why don't... you just... mention... it to her? See what... she says...?"

"Sure. I'll do that next time I see her..."

He was acting indifferently towards the idea, but his stance said otherwise as he turned back to the screen, shoulders hunched and defensive. He didn't even glance back at her, possibly hoping she'd just leave it at that, but there was no way she would stand by as he dug himself back into the insomnia she'd managed to unearth him from. Her hard work would not go to waste and she would ensure that with yet more hard work...

"When was... the last... time you... saw her...?" Tony's tone also made her uneasy, like he was hiding something from her. He knew very well that deceiving her was a hard feat... yet he still tried, the stubborn idiot...

He didn't meet her eyes as he replied, "Yesterday..."

"Okay..." she saw him breathe a sigh of relief for all of a moment before she continued, "And when... was it... really?"

His shoulders slumped yet again as he realised he'd met his match, turning back to face her and leaning back against the table beside him. He focused his gaze on the floor just ahead of his feet and sighed despondently, "Three days ago... I may or may not be avoiding her..."

Cara rolled her eyes angrily, glaring ever so slightly at him, "Tony!" The volume strained her throat, but she didn't care, "How do... you expect... to get better... if you... don't let... anyone... help...?" 

"I did let someone help. I let you help and, believe me, it took a lot of will power to trust you, but I did," he sighed again, pressing his palms against the table top, "I can't trust her... Just the look in her eyes says anything I tell her will be plastered all over Facebook as soon as I leave the room..."

"I'm sure... she wouldn't..." As she said them, Cara believed her own words less and less. There was definitely an unfavourable air to that woman - she wouldn't put anything past her...

"I can't take the risk... I swear she makes the anxiety worse..." Tony was almost pleading by this point, his eyes filling with fragility from the pupil outwards, "I stopped turning up to sessions and she hasn't even attempted to track me down. She couldn't care less." He said it frankly, but there was worry and fear in his voice as his breathing gradually sped up, "Oh, for God's sake... not again..."

He gulped heavily, steadying himself on the table with one hand while holding his forehead with the other as she hurried across the gap between them. Bruce glanced up, concerned, from his work for a second, but she waved away his concerns, placing her hands on both of Tony's shoulders and meeting his haunted gaze. She'd witnessed more than her fair share of the billionaire's panic attacks and they'd managed to piece together the best method of reducing them which she was pleased to say worked extremely effectively.

"Tony... just breathe..." she whispered hoarsely, looking him in the eye and maintaining eye contact while rubbing his shoulders in small circular motions. The hand against his forehead dropped to his side and he began the ritualistic breathing patterns he'd found the most helpful, "Keep... your focus... on me... You're safe... okay? There's... no danger... here..."

They stood like that in silence for a few minutes, Tony's rhythmic inhales and exhales fading back to his usual breathing pace in time. "I'm sorry..." he blew out a sigh, gulping again and squeezing his eyes shut momentarily, "I know I shouldn't put this all on you with everything you've already got to deal with... I'm not your patient... but I honestly can't trust that woman to give a shit about my mental health... Please, just help me..."

Tony never said please - not even when he was talking to superior agents - so his sudden use of the rarely heard word alerted Cara to how desperate he actually was. Sure, his previous statements regarding Doctor Hart alluded to that, but the guy was a drama queen at the best of times - there was no knowing what was real emotion and what he faked to get his own way.

Cara chewed on her bottom lip in troubled thought before she came to the mental equivalent of 'fuck it', "Okay..." Tony's head shot up, his eyes wide and his mouth open in bewilderment at her answer, "I'll keep... treating you... just as long as... you don't... disrupt... my treatment of... Barnes... Don't tell... Fury or Coulson... either..."

There was pure and honest relief in the playboy's features at her unexpected acceptance of his pleas. Bruce looked their way once again and Cara shot him a warning glare which caused him to raise his hands, chuckling, "I heard nothing. My lips will not speak of the nothingness I didn't just hear."

Even Tony laughed at that, shaky and unsure but a laugh all the same, as he turned to look at his partner in crime, "Hey, Green and Scary, how come you don't hate Hart? Don't tell me you actually like her?"

"No, no..." Bruce defended himself, taking a seat on the stool beside him and halting his work to talk to them, "I'm not even on her list of patients anymore. At her request. According to Fury, she insisted her health insurance wouldn't cover her for working with me..." He seemed indifferent to the ignorance of the woman but, then again, the doctor had seemingly come to terms with his own condition well enough now that the reactions of other people didn't really bother him - that, and the fact Tony teased him on such a regular basis that he was used to it.

"How does this woman still have a job? I've eaten shawarma with more tact than her," Tony said, "What the hell did she think this job was when she signed up for it?"

Cara disregarded the question she had no answer to, instead turning her attention back to Bruce, "If... she's not... treating you... who is?"

"I've learned to cope by myself. You know that better than anyone, Cara," he reasoned but she wasn't satisfied.

"Yeah... but you still... need someone... to talk to..." The more of the Avengers she spoke to, the more and more she despised Agent Hart, "That's it... I'm going to... talk to... Fury... about this..."

"Really, there's no need-" Bruce began to argue, but Tony hastily cut him off.

"Yes, do that. You're the only one who has a chance in hell of him actually listening to you, Nielsen. He trusts your judgement..." She was about to say he was wrong about the last part, but stopped herself. Fury did trust her - he'd pretty much admitted it himself when he put forward the idea of treating Barnes. 

"Tony, are you sure it's worth getting him involved?" the doctor questioned, uncertainty edging into his voice. Bruce wasn't one to cause a scene (despite the temperance of the 'other guy') and actively avoided confrontation at all times so it wasn't surprising that he had his doubts about tackling the situation at the top.

Tony nodded determinedly, "Of course it is. Let's be real here - you, me, Nat, Pietro and who knows how many more are being screwed over by this chick and something needs to be done about it." There was audible anger in his voice as he mentioned the others and Cara knew how much the team meant to him. Not many people accepted the billionaire as he self-admittedly didn't 'play well with others', but he'd found a comfortable niche within the group and they were like family - anyone in the team could say that and truly mean it.

"Something... will be done... Tony," she promised assuredly, hoping her soft tone would calm him. If he got too worked up, it could easily trigger another attack and that was a situation she wanted to avoid at all costs, "I'll... go see Fury... now..."

"Tell him we're desperate," he called after her as she turned to leave. The desperate underlying tone to his voice emphasised his words and she knew he meant it.

"Tell him we all are," Bruce added quietly, but she still heard it as the door closed softly behind her. In her mind, she made a definite promise to both of them - she was determined her friends wouldn't be let down...


	10. draft

Date: April 22nd 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Corridor  
Time: 10:23

The corridor outside Fury's office was always unusually silent, free from any other sign of life as Cara looked directly into the monitor beside the entrance while it identified her eyes. The lock clicked and she pressed her hand against the bulletproof glass to push it open before closing it firmly behind her, waiting for the deadbolt to slide across automatically and seal the corridor.

The heightened security around the Director was the board's idea as he'd firmly pointed out when she'd initially questioned it. Their idea of being safe was locking someone inside a room so the bad people couldn't reach them rather than actually eliminating the criminals and assassins - hence why their own meeting room reportedly had walls which were three feet thick.

Barnes' containment followed the same messed-up method though instead of keeping the bad out, they saw it as keeping it in. If Bucky was allowed to roam the corridors, she had no doubts that he would recover faster and feel more human. Of course, there was no way to change their views on that since there was no way in hell she could manage to convince them to actually see the patient for themselves - at least, not without gas masks and bulletproof vests to 'protect' them from his 'toxic Hydra-ness' and the bullets from the gun he didn't possess. Freaking hypocrites...

She'd only met the board on one occasion - her induction into the Avengers Initiative - and they'd all been stuck up and cold back then, six years ago. Something told her that, although Natasha and Steve had exposed the Hydra infiltrators, the actual S.H.I.E.L.D. members weren't a great deal more caring or humane - after all, they had decided a cell was the best thing for Barnes...

"Nielsen?" A voice cut through the silence and broke her away from her thoughts, causing her to realise she'd been stood in front of Fury's door, not really doing anything. Her eyes flickered upwards and she found herself face to face with the man himself, an amused eyebrow raised at her, "Sorry, did I interrupt something? When you called up, I assumed it was urgent... Barnes?"

"No, Sir," Cara croaked gratingly, her throat still refusing to give her voice back, "It's about... the Avengers..."

Fury's eye widened slightly and he let out a low hum of either displeasure or agreement - he was always impossible to read. He glanced both ways down the corridor before looking back to her, "You'd better come inside."

\--------------

Date: April 22nd 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Director Fury's office  
Time: 10:31

The interior of Fury's office was a familiar, but not too familiar sight for Cara as she usually avoided needing to come up to it and Fury was frequently wandering the control rooms rather than inhabiting it anyway. It was light and airy, but in the way Barnes' glass cell had been, with an underlying cold and bareness to it that made it unnerving to be in. Fury took up a perch on the edge of his unused desk and gestured for her to sit in one of the chairs facing it.

"Let me guess," he said as she took a seat in what looked to be the most comfortable chair, "Stark has something to do with your presence here in front of me? How close am I?"

"It's not... just Stark..." she replied though there was a joking smile on his lips, "The team... don't think... the new therapist... is any good for them..." She knew his reaction to the fact would be a bit hit-and-miss so she braced herself for a possible outburst about how it was none of her business...

"I know," Cara was taken aback by Fury's words as he nodded solemnly, "I've read her session reports and I have the same concerns as you do..."

Cara's eyebrows knitted together, "Then... why-?"

"Haven't I done anything?" he finished for her and she nodded, "It was my role to find a suitable psychiatrist to treat Sergeant Barnes and I did that. Hiring your successor was out of my hands... it just so happened that Coulson chose her since she was already a possibility for what has since become your new role..."

"But... you're the Director...?" she pointed out, tilting her head in confusion. Surely he had the authority to fire her?

"And there's a whole board of Directors above me who oversee the Avengers Initiative, too. They may not understand how broken some of the individuals in the programme are, but they're in charge. If I break their rules I might be out of a job and you'll all be screwed," he sighed. 

Cara was shocked at the idea of S.H.I.E.L.D. without Fury. He was the only one who could argue their points to the board since Coulson was much more compliant and wouldn't contradict his seniors if his life depended on it. Without Fury, she was pretty sure most of the Avengers would rip up their contacts and leave on the next available flight, train or boat.

"Couldn't... I talk to... the board... about it? I... understand the... Avengers..." she tried, but he was already shaking his head.

"If it were up to me, I'd officially place them back under your supervision along with Barnes. You've made some really good progress with that, Steve tells me Barnes now remembers him and that's faster results than anyone was expecting, but the board insisted on full attention being placed on Barnes - they want to know everything he says, everything he does - so I'm afraid I can't do much else," the sincerity in his voice convinced her he was telling the truth, "I'm sorry. The best I can do is bring it up with the board..."

Cara nodded resignedly, "But... you can't... promise... anything will change...? I understand... but the... others may not..."

"I know some of them have been missing sessions with her," he pulled his mobile out of the pocket of his coat and double tapped something, reading aloud, "Stark hasn't seen her in three days... Natasha cancelled her sessions after the first one... Pietro and Wanda haven't been anywhere near her for two days and... oh, and she refused to treat Bruce. If I could have, I would have fired her for even making that stupid ass excuse about insurance. I'm guessing Bruce or Tony told you?"

"Do the... board... really not see... how... ridiculous... she is?" She was having a difficult time believing the stupidity of her superiors - how could they not see what was happening under their noses? The team was falling apart and they seemed to be more concerned with their own safety and any possible 'secrets' Barnes may spill. As far as she knew, Hydra had gone underground after their Winter Soldier ploy failed two years ago and that was the same time Barnes disappeared; from what the soldier had said so far, it didn't sound like he'd gone back to them so it was very unlikely that he had any useful information...

"They see it. They just care more about Barnes," Fury admitted as Cara got the feeling she wasn't supposed to know this much, but she figured her Level 6 clearance permitted her some knowledge, "What's your analysis on him so far?"

Brushing a stray hair behind her ear, her fingertips tapping against her earpiece, she considered the question carefully before replying, "In a week... we've managed... to restore some... of his... memories of the war... and the... 'Howling Commandos'... along with a... vague recollection of... Steve's identity... I'd say it... was great progress... but after... the nightmare he had... he described it... as 'distorted'... which suggests there's something... deeper... in his mind... that's been... tampered with..."

Cara was surprised by his patience as he waited for her to struggle to the very last word, not interrupting her croaks once. "You think Hydra messed with his brain?" he clarified, worry setting into his gaze, "Do you think it's reversible?"

"I'm not... sure Hydra did it... deliberately... My best guess is... that... the serum they used... wasn't correct or... complete... I think the... psychological issues... are side effects... They might... be reversible... but I don't... know..." Fury leaned back, resting his hands behind him on the desktop and breathing out a sigh at her incomplete conclusion, "At the moment... I'm focusing... on his past... before the... war... I'd need a... lot longer... to analyse the... full extent of... the problem..."

"I know," the Director nodded, pulling an annoyed face and getting to his feet, the soles of his boots squeaking on the hard floor, "and I can buy you as much time as you need, but I doubt the board will be too happy about me demanding more time for you and a decent therapist for the team... I can't promise both..."

Cara knew the underlying meaning to his words and it hit her hard as she realised the decision he was posing to her - help the team and have less time with Barnes or have more time with Barnes and risk the mental health of the team. Helping Barnes meant everything to her right now, especially since she could almost see his old self re-emerging from the darkness, but, ultimately, the team was more important in the long run...

"Get... the therapist... thing... sorted," she told him and Fury barely seemed surprised, "I've already... agreed to... see Tony and Bruce... until it's... all sorted out..."

"I would tell you not to, but I get the feeling you're going to have a long line of people outside your door until it is. If you feel overwhelmed-"

"I'll... call. I'll manage... Sir," she cut in, "I think... Barnes will understand... I have... other duties..."

"Well," Fury said with a warning tone, "just in case, I'll try my best to get a new therapist swiftly and hopefully easily. Hart doesn't strike me as someone who will go without a fight, but I'll leave Coulson in charge of that. He hired her in the first place... In the meantime, speaking of duties, don't you owe Barnes a visit today? It's midday already..."

Cara spun around, wide-eyed, to look at the clock ticking away on the wall and discovered he was right. She hadn't realised how long she'd been talking with people for, "Oh, God... Sir, if you'll... excuse me... I better get... down there..."

"Of course," he smiled knowingly, looking as though he was holding back a chuckle. Car clambered ungracefully out of the chair and stumbled over her own feet towards the door, cursing herself for getting so caught up in other things, but her heart argued that it was for a good cause. She could at least try to sleep easy in the knowledge that the Avengers' situation was being dealt with at the top.

She turned again to look back at him as her hand grazed the door handle, "Oh... and Sir?" Fury hummed for her to continue, "I was wondering... if when... Barnes is taken back... to his... old cell... I could be permitted... to show him... his file...?"

The Director visibly considered it for a moment before nodding, "Yeah, I don't see why not... It may have to be censored though, so I'll get back to you on that one. Good idea, Nielsen."

"Thank you, Sir..." She felt her cheeks flush at the compliment of her intellect, but she quickly closed the door before Fury could spot the redness filling her face. She was quite proud of the idea herself so it was flattering for someone higher than her to agree with her. 

She shook her head to clear her thoughts before hurrying down the corridor towards the lift, keying in her code and letting herself out of Fury's office 'enclosure'. Jabbing at the floor number with her index finger, she frantically urged the elevator to arrive faster, only anticipating nothing bad had happened while she was preoccupied...

\-----------------

Date: April 22nd 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Holding Cell 03 - Exterior  
Time: 11:04

When Cara got down to the holding cell, she was relieved to find Barnes sat up and awake but completely calm, staring at the fingers of his flesh hand since the metal one was still clamped beside him. He glanced up, probably seeing her walk in, and looked at her for a long moment before reoccupying his focus on his hand again.

The haunted look, she noticed in the short length of eye contact, was fading in his pupils, but it still lingered at the edges. Of course, he was still broken - he would be for a long time - but this change, no matter how minute it was, filled her with a strong sense of hope for the man on the other side of the glass. She just had to keep her fingers crossed that her decision to prioritise the Avengers over him would pay off...

It looked like Steve had been stolen away by either Tony or Coulson as Batty sat alone, her feet crossed atop the console, staring placidly at Barnes who was paying her no attention. She turned her head slightly towards Cara as the door closed behind her before looking back towards the glass when she realised who it was, "I was wondering when you were going to turn up... Steve just left." She nodded at the Sergeant who was now looking back at them inquisitively, perhaps trying to read their lips, "He's been like that all morning. I was honestly expecting him to do something when they went in to give him food, but he just ate it..."

"Did anything... happen during the... night...?" 

Hope raised an eyebrow at the hoarseness of Cara's voice, but she didn't comment on it as she shook her head, "He's behaved himself ever since you left yesterday. Steve was a little off, though..." She trailed off, dropping her feet from the console and swivelling the chair to face Cara, her face awash with concern and confusion.

"How do... you mean?" Cara asked, suspecting she already knew the answer, but not wanting to jump to conclusions, "More weird... than Steve... usually is?"

"Yeah..." the agent prolonged the word as though she was trying to form the best way of explaining the Captain's behaviour, "He kept stumbling over everything he was saying. I think I might have scared him or something..."

"Steve gets... like that... sometimes... It's nothing... to worry about..." was the best excuse Cara could come up with without straight out telling Batty how head-over-heels in love Steve clearly was with her. She was around 99.9% certain her hunch was correct, but obviously Hope didn't fully, if at all, return the feelings of the Captain...

Tony had his work cut out playing Cupid with this pair...

\-------------

Date: April 22nd 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Holding Cell 03 - Interior  
Time: 11:10

"Is your neck any better?"

Cara was slightly rattled by the first question she was faced with as soon as she stepped into the holding cell. She looked up to find Barnes tilting his head at her, genuine concern holding steady in his eyes. His hair had been pushed back behind his ears once again as it seemed to fall in his face every time he slept (if he slept),"Uh... yeah... it's getting... there..."

He nodded rhythmically, pursing his lips momentarily before chewing on the top one either with nerves or in thought. Her footsteps broke through the blanket of silence he'd got comfy beneath as she stepped over to stand in front of him, leaning back on the glass Batty was sat on the other side of, primed and ready in case she needed to step in.

"I'm sorry I hurt you," he said quietly, still looking Cara directly in the eyes but not exactly staring, more like he was examining her as she did the same to him, "I regret it a lot... I didn't mean to..."

"I told you... it's not... your fault..." she reiterated, noting how his expression became more pained every time she paused as though the thought that he caused it hurt him physically, "Please... if you're going... to blame... anyone... blame them..."

Something in the way his gaze flickered at her words told her he knew exactly who she meant, but he didn't react in any way to it. Instead, his eyes dropped to his lap and he blew out a strong breath, muttering, "I do blame them... Why did they do this to me...? Why me? Why choose me?"

"We don't... know why you... were used, but..." she paused and coughed before reconsidering, "Do you... recall the... train incident...?" The clueless look on his face suggested he had no idea what she was talking about, but a light clunk drew both their attentions to his metal hand whose fist had clenched tightly as she spoke - clearly she'd pressed on some sort of repressed memory, "What do you... remember... about losing your... arm?"

"Nothing..." Honesty was deeply embedded into his voice, but there was an edge to it that said he himself didn't truly believe what his mouth was saying, "There's... huge chunks of my past that are missing and..." He trailed off for a few moments before speaking up in barely a whisper, "They... they brainwashed me, didn't they?"

"We... think so... yes," Cara replied carefully, crossing her arms across her chest, "You were... with them for over... seventy years... It's not... surprising... that wiping your... memory... happened more than... once over... that time..."

"They made me forget everything... my entire life...?" The haunted look was back and just as heart-shattering as it had been the first time she'd seen it, "I barely know who the hell I am... what I've done... where I've been... I don't know anything..."

"Well... that's why... we're here, right...?" She knew the board wouldn't agree with that conclusion. To them, she was there to get information from Barnes about Hydra, not to help him cope, but Cara was determined to treat him exactly how she'd treat any other patient. That was, as Fury had told her originally, what he was - a patient, "We'll get your... memory back... James-"

"Bucky," he corrected almost as a reflex, meeting her gaze and slowly relaxing, his shoulders dropping as the tension filtered out, "Call me Bucky, please... B-before the war, everyone called me Bucky but... they called me James... I don't want to remember them..."

'But you're going to have to...' Cara wanted to tell him, 'The board wants to know all about them...' She swallowed her words, gulping with overwhelming guilt at the thought that she may have to force the information out of him against his will. He shouldn't have to remember the people who gave him so much grief and she didn't want to make him...

But, she didn't tell him any of that. Instead, she simply replied, "Okay, Bucky... How about... we expand on... what you can... already remember... about before... the war...?"

He nodded silently, shuffling in the chair which was looking more and more uncomfortable every time she saw him in it. He noticed her staring at the shackles that held him down and a short breath escaped his mouth, "When can I go back to the other cell? I thought I hated that one, but this is even worse... I feel like... an animal..."

She lifted a hand to her neck and gestured to her bandages vaguely, "When these... come off... Hopefully, I can... convince Bruce... to take them off... tomorrow..."

"Is Bruce a doctor?" He seemed unsure about asking, probably worrying he was intruding, but she gave him a reassuring smile and the uncertain look in his eyes faded.

"Doctor of science... He treated... my neck injury... because he knows me... and no other... agents... are supposed to... know about... you..." They were now more focused on her than him, but Cara figured he should know at least some things about the person who was treating him; perhaps it would encourage him to relax and open up more...

"Why does he know about me?" Bucky's eyebrows furrowed in confusion as though he was trying to figure out the answer for himself, "Is he treating me, too? Is that guy... Steve... a doctor?"

At that question, Cara came to the sudden realisation that he had no idea who the team were. Of course he didn't - why on earth would he? When he'd come face to face with Nat, Steve and Sam before, he'd probably been wiped not long after by Hydra and he didn't know they were Avengers, just that one of them was his mission. Even if he hadn't returned to Hydra after the helicarrier crash, he only knew Steve and he knew him from before the war anyway...

"No, he's a Captain... You fought... with him... You've heard of... Captain America...?" she clarified as he shot her a bizarre look. 

"You mean... he really is the same guy...? I... thought I was going crazy... When I heard his voice, I thought I was making it up..." he broke eye contact with her to stare at the floor in bewilderment before looking back up, "Steve Rogers is still alive?"

"Yeah..." she nodded, seeing his mind blowing before her eyes and fighting back a smile, "He was frozen... as we believe... you were... Maybe he could... tell you about... it sometime..."

"My God..." he breathed in disbelief, his eyes as wide as coins, "That punk just doesn't know when to quit, does he...? Steve Rogers... Wait... why does he work for S.H.I.E.L.D.? ... Peggy's not still alive somehow, is she?"

Cara was more than relieved by his reaction to the news that his best friend was still knocking around, but his question brought up a new problem. Mentioning Peggy Carter in too much depth could trigger a memory of Howard Stark and she didn't yet know if Bucky retained a memory of the people he'd killed as the Winter Soldier...

Deciding to play it safe, she just said, "No. No, she's not... Steve works here... because S.H.I.E.L.D... aided his... rehabilitation. He's also... a member of... the Avengers..."

"The ones who made that city fly last year...? Those Avengers...?" he questioned, raising an eyebrow, "Steve was there...?"

"Sokovia, yeah..." she decided not to question how he knew about it, assuming wherever he'd been had reported on the story. The media coverage on that disaster would have been extremely hard to miss, "He saved... a lot of people... there... he only wishes... he saved more..."

She recalled the sessions shortly after the chaos in which Steve continuously beat himself up about not saving everybody. That was if he even turned up to her office at all - she eventually tracked him down to the training floor where she found him murdering punching bags as he let out his anger over the deaths of so many Sokovians. No matter what she told him, he still blamed himself - a trait he seemed to have picked up from Bucky...

"Of course he does..." Bucky surprised her by speaking up with a softer tone, a hint of admiration edging into it as a faint smile ghosted his lips, "He hasn't changed a bit, has he?"

"We don't... think so..." she replied, her voice more confident as the tricky part of the conversation passed without a negative reaction. The man Steve had told her so many stories about was becoming clearer to see in the man before her, the fondness in his voice as he spoke of the Captain showing how they cared about each other equally. From what Steve had said, Bucky was like an older brother to him and it seemed the Sergeant saw him as a troublemaking younger sibling.

Suddenly, the cheerfulness faltered and he blew out a troubled sigh, the abrupt change concerning Cara as his tone dropped a few notes, "I thought he was dead... I thought all my old friends were dead..."

"So did I..." Cara jumped as Steve's voice interrupted them again in what was slowly becoming a habit for him. She turned to find him stood there and shot him a glare through the glass as he held up his hands in surrender, "I know, I know. You told me not to talk to him, but you're in there, too, so why can't I?" His words were rapid, almost frantic, as his eyes flickered between her and Bucky.

"I'm not supposed... to let you..." she began to argue, but Hope interrupted her, taking the microphone from Steve's hands as the Captain looked at her in relief and bewilderment.

"I'll cover for you. He needs this. Let him in," she nodded towards the door. Cara turned back and glanced at Bucky, but he was too focused on Steve's face to notice. Reluctantly, knowing she could jeopardise her job doing this, she stepped over to the door and unlocked it, silently praying this wouldn't backfire and land them all in deep trouble as Steve edged past her until he, too, was in the room.

"Don't mess... this up," she warned him, pointing a stern finger at him as he nodded, somewhat amused by her tone, "I'm not... kidding..."

"I know you're not. I'm just happy to see your face after the weird conversation I just had with Tony..." he whispered back, causing her to hide her smile at the thought of what Tony could possibly have said. She noticed Steve's cheeks tinge slightly pink and it physically pained her not to grin, "I'll be careful what I say, alright?"

Cara nodded and returned her attention to Bucky who was looking between them with an odd expression on his face, a glint in his eyes and an eyebrow raised, "Bucky... this is Steve... but you... already knew that..."

"Hey..." he turned his gaze to Steve, a small smile on his lips, but the apprehension still lingering in his eyes.

"Hey, Buck..." Cara stepped sideways slightly to allow Steve to walk ahead of her, leaning back against the wall and watching as he stood a few feet away from the restrained man, "You're looking good for a guy pushing a hundred..."

Cara's eyes widened at Steve's joking tone, but her fears were neutralised as Bucky chuckled lightly - a beautiful sound coming from the depths of a troubled and broken man.

"I could say the same about you..." This time a larger smile graced the Sergeant's face and Cara was amazed to see how easily he slipped into a joking mood when met with his best friend, "Steve... I don't- ...your mom's name was Sarah... right? I'm still piecing stuff together..." He didn't sound fully sure, tilting his head.

"Yeah..." Steve replied, his own face engulfed by the size of his smile, "It's good to see you as you again... You were sorta fuzzy last time..."

As they continued to talk, Cara just stood back and observed, finding no reason to intrude on their conversation. They kept going like that for over an hour, covering subjects from the super-soldier serum to Peggy Carter (Steve did well not to show any emotion when Bucky mentioned her, especially as he'd only recently got the news of her death and attended her funeral), thankfully triggering no negative memories as she'd feared. Bucky grew visibly happier and more comfortable as time went on, all remnants of the insecure and angry man he had been completely disappearing as he talked freely about the war.

She'd finally found it. The cure to Bucky's condition. It wasn't a perfect fix by any stretch of the imagination and there was still a lot of work to do on her part, but this was the first step on the road to recovery. Steve had always refused to read the stuff about what Hydra did to his friend so he knew just as much as Bucky did - they were both on the same page.

Steve Rogers, with time, could be the one to pull him out of that abyss of confusion... and she'd stick by his side every step of the way...


	11. draft

Date: April 23rd 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Dorm Room - 3rd floor  
Time: 02:41

Day 9 (Eighth day of treatment)

In the very early hours of the next morning, Cara was still wide awake, having long since abandoned the idea of sleep as her chronic insomnia persistently refused to let her brain rest. She hadn't seen the point in changing out of her uniform to go to bed, already knowing it would be a waste of time since every time her head touched the pillow, her mind was abuzz with information and questions.

So there she lay, staring up at the ceiling in the darkness of her room. She wasn't a stranger to the feeling of restlessness - it had started sometime during her teenage years - but it was still a regular annoyance more than an issue, especially as the only way she could drift off was to take sleeping pills of the same strength as the ones she prescribed for Tony.

Pills weren't pleasant. Over ten years of taking them had informed her of that so, whenever possible, she cut down on the number she had to take, reducing one a day to one every three days. The average insomniac can go without sleep for around five days without passing out from pure exhaustion; Cara could manage four so she stayed safe by having an induced rest every three days. If she forced herself to four, there was a risk she could fall asleep on the job...

Only Fury knew about it and he usually avoided any mention of it unless she was looking particularly tired on the CCTV feed, in which case he'd call her and instruct her to take a rest. He always looked out for her, just like he looked out for everyone else. Fury wasn't a bad guy... he just ended up in the centre of bad circumstances.

A little like another man she was getting to know...

A light buzzing of plastic against metal caused her to lift her head from the pillow, her eyes searching for the source of the noise before zeroing in on the mobile she'd discarded on the table across the room. Early morning calls were rare in her specific line of work, but they weren't unheard of - Tony occasionally called when he awoke from a nightmare. Groaning, she pulled herself into a sitting position, throwing her legs off the bed and resting her booted feet on the floor before heaving her entire body upright and steadying herself on the bedside table with one hand.

She glanced towards the clock, her eyes adjusting enough in the dark to see the hands ticking steadily towards three am and begging the obvious question - who the hell was calling her at this time?

Figuring it had to have something to do with Bucky due to the bizarre timing (unless Tony was having troubles), Cara crossed the room and swiped the phone up quickly, not checking the caller ID and not needing to as Hope's voice emanated from the speaker as soon as she accepted the call, "Cara, I need you to come here. Now."

"What...? What's wrong?" Panic rose in the pit of her stomach as her mind ran wild with the countless possibilities, fixating mainly on the worse end of the spectrum.

"Barnes wants to see you. He's pretty calm at the moment, but he's adamant that he needs to talk to you right now," Hope replied, somewhat soothing the worry escalating in Cara's mind to a more manageable level, "He also said to apologise for the time..."

Cara sighed, shaking her head and grabbing her earpiece from the table where she'd discarded it, "Don't worry. I was awake anyway..." Her hand reached for the door handle, the cold metal contrasting the warmth of her skin, "I'll be there in five..."

\---------------

Date: April 23rd 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Holding Cell 03 - Exterior  
Time: 02:45

The journey from her floor down to the holding cells was shorter than it usually was, only passing three floors rather than the thirty plus it took her from the Avengers' floor or Fury's office. It was quieter, too, but that was to be expected; the agents on the night shift usually kept themselves to themselves - a fact Cara had discovered after countless late night, insomnia-fueled wanderings about the tower.

She reached Bucky's room in around three minutes, keying in the code she'd memorised and stored along with the various other entry numbers she had in her head. The door hissed loudly in the silence of the empty corridor before swinging open, revealing a surprisingly wide-awake looking Hope who held her hand out in front of her expectantly after seeing Cara in the doorway.

"How is he?" Cara asked while removing her phone from her pocket and unhooking her earpiece, placing both in the agent's grasp. She sent a sidelong glance towards the door at the end of the short corridor before looking back towards the blonde, her eyes catching sight of three empty coffee cups laying on the console in the observation room behind her. Maybe her alertness wasn't so surprising after all...

"He's fine. His vitals are normal, heart rate hasn't changed," she listed, "He's just very determined to talk to you. He was sat there quietly, probably asleep, until about ten minutes ago when he caught my attention and told me what I told you on the phone. Any idea what this is about?" Batty had never really seemed overjoyed at having the job of watching him twenty-four hours a day, but she genuinely sounded interested, intrigued almost - whether it was a side effect of the caffeine or actually real, Cara couldn't tell.

"Not a clue," she replied, her voice still hoarse but without so many pauses in between words, "Guess I'm going to find out..."

Hope nodded, retreating back to the control room where another cup of coffee was probably waiting for her. Puffing out a sharp breath which cut though the silence like a knife, Cara straightened her shoulders and headed towards the door that separated her from her patient, typing in the number and walking in.

\---------------

Date: April 23rd 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Holding Cell 03 - Interior  
Time: 02:47

Bucky's head snapped up attentively as she stepped inside, watching her close the door with a light clang of metal meeting metal. The surprise in his gaze said he hadn't noticed her arrival for once. "I'm sorry it's so early," he rushed to apologise while she moved to her regular place against the glass, "I needed to tell you right away..."

"Tell me what, Bucky?" Cara questioned, "You don't have to apologise. I was already awake." She pondered explaining her insomnia to him, wondering if it could prove to him that everybody had their own demons, but decided now wasn't the time.

"Oh..." he seemed to bite back another question, possibly concerning why she was awake at three am, before answering her question, "I remembered something... something about what you said earlier... but I don't know if it's real... if it actually happened..."

That hadn't been what Cara had expected this to be about, but he seemed pretty cut up about whatever the memory was. As she ran back through everything they'd discussed during the previous session in her mind, searching for whatever it could possibly be, she asked, "What do you remember?"

He glanced sideways for a few moments at what she thought was the wall before realising his eyes were focused on something nearer - his metal arm, sandwiched between the two parts of the clamp. He stared at it awhile before switching his focus back to her, "I think... I think I remember... the train..."

Cara nodded slowly once, then twice, grasping for how to respond to that. If he remembered the train, how much could he remember of what happened after? Could he recall why he'd been on the train in the first place? "What about the train? What exactly do you remember...?"

Bucky gulped, his tongue darting out to dampen his chapped lips like a nervous tick as he blinked, unsure, "Steve was under attack and I was covering him... he was near the door and... I slipped and fell..."

"Off the train?" 

"No... I grabbed ahold of some... piping or something..." he trailed off as though trying to remember what happened next, "Steve tried to grab my hand but... the piping broke... Then, I fell off the train..." He stared at the floor for a moment before meeting her gaze again, a questioning look in his eyes.

"I'm sorry. I only knew as much as Steve has told me," Cara clarified, giving a reason for the conclusion she'd leapt to, "He was vague. Understandably..."

He nodded, a sharp exhale escaping his nose, "So, that was all real...?"

"As far as I know. Yes," she replied, "I haven't read your file in detail, but it doesn't sound like something they'd make up for you to remember. They wouldn't gain anything from making that up..."

"I thought it had to be..." he sighed, an undertone of despondence trickling slowly into his voice as he did, "I could sort of... feel it. It sounds crazy, but I woke up to a... pain... in my arm... That arm..." He gestured to the trapped limb with the fingers of his flesh hand, "I think it was the pain I felt when I lost it..."

"You lost it when you fell?" S.H.I.E.L.D. had never been fully sure how the soldier ended up with a metal arm. Some of the board had apparently thought Hydra may have removed his real arm to replace it with the stronger, metal one, but she'd never seen the logic in that - why replace one limb and not the rest if they wanted strength, and if they wanted durability why bother with a human at all?

"I remember seeing blood... so much blood..." he muttered, shaking his head almost in an attempt to shake the memory away, "The snow I landed on... it was stained completely red and... I think I must have passed out from the pain... It all went black after that..."

"You don't remember anything after that?" Cara tried, but he firmly shook his head, looking her directly in the eyes with such trauma shining it them that she had to drop the subject, unable to bring herself to ask him any more about it.

"I'm not sure I want to remember any more after that..." 

"Bucky, I..." she tried to stop herself saying it, but she'd had enough of hiding things from him. He deserved to know, therefore she had to come clean, "I haven't told you the reason I'm actually here... Mainly because I don't want to do it... but I think you should know..."

The Sergeant sat back slightly in the chair, leaning away from her, the trauma replaced with distrust in his gaze, "Know what...? I thought you were helping me remember..."

"I am, I promise," she insisted, finding it hard to meet his gaze but forcing herself to look at him dead in the eye, "but I'm supposed to be finding out information... I don't want to, but I'm supposed to be finding out what Hydra did to you... S.H.I.E.L.D. wants to know everything that happened..."

His face became unreadable as he tore his focus away from her, choosing instead to stare at his metal arm before forcing out his words, "Why? Has this whole thing been a lie? You haven't been helping me... you've been interrogating me?"

"No... the man who assigned me to your case wanted me to help you. He wants to get Steve his best friend back," Cara reasoned, almost repeating Fury's exact words while Bucky eyed her suspiciously, "It's just... well, his boss' want more than that... They see you as an opportunity for information about Hydra's whereabouts..."

"But... I don't know where they are..." he replied, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion, "I left them behind two years ago..."

"I know that... but the board of directors don't know you. They just know you're the only Hydra agent they've ever encountered who hasn't swallowed cyanide before they could interrogate them..." 

\---------------

Date: April 23rd 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Holding Cell 03 - Exterior  
Time: 02:59

On the other side of the glass, Agent Batty was listening attentively to the conversation in the cell, watching Barnes closely in case anything triggered an aggressive response on his part. She knew Cara was taking a huge risk in telling him about the board's incentive for sending her in, but the more she heard of what the therapist had to say, the more she found herself agreeing.

As more of a field agent with physical training than a therapist like Nielsen, Hope wasn't familiar with the higher ranking agents at S.H.I.E.L.D. and she certainly had never met the board, but she knew Cara must have at some point and was in close relations with the Director - all this pointed to the conclusion that she knew what she was talking about.

And what she was talking about sounded ridiculous. The board - the people who controlled all of S.H.I.E.L.D. - were pinning their hopes of finding Hydra on a severely broken man who deserved better than being forced to remember the trauma he's been through. She may not have known much about Bucky Barnes before she accepted the role of Nielsen's bodyguard, but she'd seen enough to know he wasn't faking this amnesia. He truly didn't want to remember...

The sound of the door opening behind her caused her to instinctively mute the speakers, silencing everything that was being said in the other room before turning to look at the new arrival. When she saw who it was, she was thankful for the mute button - Cara would be fired in an instant if they knew what she was saying, "Can I help you, Sir?"

Agent Coulson completely disregarded her for a moment as he usually seemed to, instead glancing over her shoulder at the two in the room behind her, "I saw Nielsen heading down here on the camera feed. It's a little early for a therapy session, isn't it?"

Sensing the question was rhetorical, Hope figured he was actually asking why Cara was down there, "Barnes requested her presence, Sir. He remembered something, I think..."

Her superior's demeanour shifted almost unintelligibly at her words, interest edging into his voice, "Remembered something? Remembered what, exactly?"

"I don't know, Sir, I don't think my rank clears me to know that sort of information..." Her remark was a little coy, but Coulson didn't pick up on it, thankfully. Instead, he stepped around her chair to stand in front of the console, staring through the glass.

"Let's hope she's making some progress," he spoke up after a few seconds of continuously watching their soundless conversation. She only wished he wouldn't ask about the lack of sound, "Or else she might have to hand him over to someone else..."

"Sir?" She wasn't sure she liked how his tone changed with those words, especially due to the questionable meaning of them.

"I trust you won't disclose this to Nielsen. You don't appear to get along," he said, waiting until she nodded though in the back of her mind she told herself she was definitely telling Cara every word he was about to say, "The board has decided, if she doesn't find out anything more about Hydra in the next few days, then Barnes will be transferred to another unit." 

"Another unit, Sir?"

"Yes. They've had enough of waiting," he told her, still looking straight ahead at the two, "We'll send him somewhere they can force the information out of him..."

\------------

Date: April 23rd 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Holding Cell 03 - Exterior   
Time: 03:22

"They're going to what?!" Cara demanded as Hope recounted to her the full extent of her conversation with Agent Coulson. She'd noticed him walking in from the other side of the glass, but had been too busy explaining the situation to Bucky to pay him much attention - now she wished she'd been there to give him an earful.

"Shh..." the blonde hushed her, taking another sip from her stone-cold coffee cup and pulling a face before setting it down on the console, "Well, this coffee needs to become acquainted with a trashcan..."

"I don't care about the coffee. Are you sure he meant 'transfer'?" she questioned, her heart rate speeding more like a vibration than a series of beats. There was no way they could transfer her patient when she was so close to a breakthrough with him.

"Well, he said transfer so, yes, I would assume he meant transfer..." Hope replied, nodding and staring sadly at the cold remains of what was once a delicious stimulant before looking up at Cara, "I'm being snarky again, aren't I? Sorry, I get like that when I'm tired..."

Cara sighed, "It's okay, I understand..." She felt like she could understand anything concerning sleeplessness, especially since it was the bane of her entire existence...

"I'm as worried as you are," the other agent insisted earnestly, eyes wide, the dark bags under them becoming visible in the harsh light above the two women, "He said they're going to send Barnes to somewhere the information can be forced out of him and I really didn't like the way his voice changed when he said it..."

"I knew they'd pull something like this after a while. I just didn't expect it so soon..." It was true - she could tell she wasn't making the right type of progress for the board to be happy, but this was tight, even for them.

"Well," Hope lay her head back against the chair she was perched on, "what are we going to do about it? I'd guess we've got about three days before they take him, from the way Coulson was talking..."

"What are we going to do? We can't do anything. I'm not even supposed to know about this!" Cara said, exasperation rising in her voice. She looked towards Bucky but his eyes were closed as he seemed to have drifted off at some point since she'd left him alone - she envied him of his ability to do that though she knew his sleep would be anything but restful.

Hope just shook her head, sitting forward and resting her hands atop her knees, "We must be able to do something... We have to, for his sake..." She jutted her head in the direction of the glass, but it wasn't necessary as Cara was already watching Bucky tiredly, fully agreeing with her point, but having no idea how to do anything about it.

"How?" She voiced her thoughts, turning her attention back to the woman in front of her, "I can't force him to remember what they want him to... I just don't have the strength to put him through that..." She was beginning to see what Bruce meant about being 'too compassionate for her own good'...

"I don't want to either. He deserves better than that," Hope admitted, the grip on her knees tightening as she let out a noise of frustration, "Ugh, there must be something... some way to stop them..."

"Don't dwell on it too much," Cara sighed, her eyes drawn to the obvious signs of fatigue on the slightly younger - but much stronger - agent's face. Her skin was pale all except for beneath her eyes where it darkened in misshapen rings of tiredness, circling her drowsy eyes as though drawing attention to how exhausted she was, "You should get some sleep..."

She knew it was hypocritical to insist sleep for others yet not sleep a wink herself, but they had a choice to sleep or not - her choice had been snatched away by her insomnia - so while they could still choose, she made sure that, nine times out of ten, they chose rest. Again, too compassionate...

"I can't. My shift ends at six when some guy comes in to give me three hours rest. Then, at nine, when you and Steve usually come in, I have to be back down here," Hope explained, but Cara was already shaking her head.

"Get an extra two and a half hours rest, then. It seems like no one around here gets the amount of sleep they should..." The blonde began to argue, but she held a hand up to cut her off, "Go. I'll keep an eye out here. God knows I'm not likely to fall asleep on the job..." 

She saw the determination in Hope's eyes distinguish like a flame, replaced with embers of despondence as she seemed to give in, "Are you sure...?" 

"Yes, I'm sure. If anyone asks, tell them I forced you to go," Cara forced a wry smile as Hope picked up her coffee cup and went to drop it in the trash by the door. She turned back, her hand on the door handle, a questioning look in her eyes, "Go. Get some rest. You deserve it after all you've done to help..."

"Thank you so much, Cara," she said earnestly, opening the door and allowing the cooler air from the corridor to flood in, "I think you're one of the nicest people I've met at S.H.I.E.L.D and it's a very short list..."

"Don't mention it," Cara called after her before the door closed behind her, enveloping the room in a peaceful silence but no silence was peaceful enough to allow her to sleep - she would be in a vicious circle of insomnia until it did...

\------------------

Date: April 23rd 201--  
Location: SHIELD Headquarters - Holding Cell 03 - Exterior  
Time: 09:01

Four and a half hours later, exactly on time, Steve made an appearance, shattering the long silence that had hung in the air. Bucky had managed to sleep the entire time she'd been sat there though she'd been right in suspecting it wouldn't be calm - around an hour earlier he'd begun thrashing and crying out through his unconsciousness so much that she'd had to mute the cell. She couldn't go in and wake him without someone watching for her own safety...

"Hey," Steve said quietly, causing her to lift her head from where it rested on her forearms. She noticed a coffee cup in his hand and his eyes scanned the empty room, "I was expecting Hope to be here... I brought her coffee..." That explained how the other agent managed to always have fresh coffee despite the fact she never left the room.

"I told her to get some sleep. She's probably still in her room," she informed him before something in the back of her mind pointed out this was the perfect opportunity to ask him about his relationship with a certain blonde agent, "What's going on between you and her?"

He looked away as his face flushed pink, setting the cup down on the side and avoiding her gaze, "I-I don't know what you mean..."

"This is what I mean," she pointed out, smirking at his defensive reaction, "You get all tense whenever she talks to you and stuttery when someone confronts you about it. Tony called me after that little talk he had with you... he said you were exactly the same then..."

"I knew you must have had something to do with that! There was no way Tony knew who Hope was or that I liked her without someone else telling hi- Oh..." he trailed off in realisation that he not only hadn't denied her accusation, but had basically added more fuel to the fire with his reply.

"Spill," Cara demanded, her smirk evolving into a grin, "And don't even try lying to me. I'm a psychiatrist, I can read body language like a book."

"S-she's just a friend..." he insisted, folding his arms across his chest and continuing to avoid her eyes, "I swear..."

"Now, Steve, I'm not saying I know everything about you, but I do know everything about you so don't try telling me that's how you act around a friend. If it is, I'm very disappointed you've never blushed around me," she leaned back on the chair slightly to get a better view of his face, "Does this mean we're not friends?"

"Yes- I mean, no!" Steve struggled, finding a sudden intense interest in the ground at his feet as his cheeks went bright red again, "You're my friend... and, I think, she's my friend, too... It's just... it's complicated..."

"I'll say. You've confused the poor girl, Steve," Cara said pointedly, reaching forward and poking his forearm to make him look at her, "She thinks you're scared of her... Are you?"

"N-no!" His eyes went wide at the idea, "I'm not scared of Hope... I'm just-"

"What are you scared of, then? Heartbreak? Rejection?" She noticed how his shoulders slumped slightly at her second guess, "Ah... You're worried she doesn't feel the same way?"

Looking away, he nodded slowly, breathing out a weighty sigh. Of course, Cara realised, Steve had never been much of a 'Romeo' even before the war so it shouldn't be much of a surprise that he had no idea how to act on the feelings he has. The poor guy was lovestruck and hadn't got a clue what to do about it...

"I don't know what to say to you, Steve," she admitted honestly, "Talk to Tony about it-" She saw the look of apprehension flash in his eyes and laughed lightly, "He knows about all of this relationship stuff better than I do..."

"I am not asking Stark for relationship advice," Steve replied adamantly, firmly shaking his head, "He'll just make me look like a fool..."

"Ask Nat, then," Cara shrugged, figuring she was the next best thing, "If anyone knows how to pull someone, it'll be her."

"Pull someone?" he furrowed his eyebrows in obvious confusion at her choice of words, "I don't want to pull Hope-"

"Yes, you do, Steve. Trust me." Stretching slightly, she got up and walked to the door, opening it wide and gesturing for Steve to go through it, "Nat's probably in training. Explain everything to her. I think she'll be happy to help..."

Steve glanced down at the coffee cup beside him, "But... the coffee-"

"I'll tell her you brought it, don't worry," Cara assured him, gesturing again towards the open door, this time more exaggeratedly, "Now, go!"

Once he'd finally stopped making excuses and actually left, she grabbed her phone and typed an explanation of what was coming her way to Natasha before sending it and receiving an amused reply from the assassin.

'Steve's on his way up to you. Needs some relationship advice. Please help him, he's ridiculously lost :) Cara x'

'Ok... I'll try my best. Not sure how successful it'll be but I'll probs get a good laugh anyway. Nat Xx'

Laying the device back down beside the steaming coffee cup, Cara brought her attention back to Bucky, flinching slightly as she looked up and found him staring back at her. He seemed to smile at her reaction before his lips moved to say something she couldn't hear, confusing her for a second until she remembered she'd muted the cell.

She held up a finger to tell him to hold on before pressing the button and making it so they could both hear each other clearly, "What did you say, Bucky?"

"What was that about? With Steve?" he questioned, the sound of his voice coming through the speakers above her head.

She considered telling him the whole story, but figured that wasn't fair to Steve - having his best friend teasing him as well as everyone else might make him shy away from ever asking Hope out, "It's nothing at the moment. I'll tell you if it develops into something interesting..." Great, now she felt like she was gossiping about her fellow agents... "Did you sleep well?"

She already knew the answer to the question after seeing the torment on his face as he slept but she felt the need to ask anyway. He shook his head, "Not really... It was the same dream as before but... well, it wasn't you this time..."

"Who was it?" She was relieved that his mind was no longer trying to convince him she was evil, but the way his voice dropped worried her, "Bucky..."

"Steve..." he muttered, just loud enough for it to pick up on the interior microphone, "Steve was trying to kill me and I... I strangled him..." His gaze fell to his lap, "I knew it wasn't real as soon as I saw him alive, but I thought I'd killed him... I thought I'd killed the one thing I have left of my old self..."

"But you didn't kill him, Bucky? You understand that, right?" Cara questioned, waiting for him to nod, her mind calming slightly when he did, "As long as you can identify what's real and what is caused by your PTSD, we can combat the nightmares..."

"PTSD...?" he looked back up at her, confusion laced across his features, "Isn't that what people got in the war? I wasn't even there for the end of the war..."

"You've been through a war of your own, though, Bucky. Your entire life has been one," she replied calmly and matter-of-factly, trusting that he could see that himself, "You're lucky to have survived it..."

He just sighed and Cara swore she saw tears glistening in his eyes as he turned away to look towards his metal limb. He gestured towards it with the other hand, his voice quiet as he spoke, "Yeah... I wouldn't exactly call this 'luck'..."


End file.
